Note 168 — Chapter II

"I have not sleep'd above three nights or four in a bed, but, after walking ... all the day, I lay down before the fire upon a little hay, straw, fodder or bearskin ... with man, wife, and children, like a parcel of dogs and cats; and happy is he, who gets the berth nearest the fire." (Washington to a friend, in 1748; Writings: Ford, i, 7.)

Here is another of Washington's descriptions of frontier comforts: "I not being so good a woodsman as ye rest of my company, striped myself very orderly and went into ye Bed, as they calld it, when to my surprize, I found it to be nothing but a little straw matted together without sheets or any thing else, but only one thread bear [sic] blanket with double its weight of vermin such as Lice, Fleas, &c." (Washington's Diary, March 15, 1747; ib., 2.) And see La Rochefoucauld, iii, 175, for description of homes of farmers in the Valley forty years later—miserable log huts "which swarmed with children." Thomas Marshall's little house was much better than, and the manners of the family were far superior to, those described by Washington and La Rochefoucauld.