mouth, the fine oval of cheek and chin, and begin to comprehend the probability of the sway she held over the hearts of two of the finest men in the grand old Mother State. A letter, still extant, from Washington to a friend who had bantered him upon his admiration of Mrs. Custis, contains this remarkable passage: 'You need not tease me about the beautiful widow. You know very well whom I love." The great chieftain is a trifle more human to our apprehension for the rift in the granitic formation that grants us a glimpse of fire in the heart of the boulder. In the old Bruton parish church (founded in 1632) we are shown the gray marble font from which Pocahontas was baptized. The building is smaller now than in the times of the royal Governors, by the depth of the room cut off from the rear of the altar. In this room is the royal gallery where sat the representative of the Crown, his family, and subofficers, during divine service. A door at the back was the private entrance to what corresponded in the provinces with the royal "closet" in English chapel or cathedral. That shabby little door opened Sunday after Sunday for one year to let pass into the gallery such fine folk as "the Right Honorable the Countess of Dunmore, with Lord Fincastle, the Honorable Alexander and John Murray, and the Ladies Catherine, Augusta, and Susan Murray." From a visitor at the palace we hear that Lady Dunmore is a very elegant woman. Her daughters are fine, sprightly, sweet girls. Goodness of heart flashes from them in every look." That was the eighteenth-century Jenkins manner of speaking of the occupants of the royal "closets." We volunteer surmises as to who filled this particular post of honor upon June 1, 1774, the memorable fast-day when all the worshippers wore mourning, and the text of the sermon was, "Help, Lord! for the godly man ceaseth, for the faithful fail from among the children of men." Lady Dunmore and her daughters may have had their dish of taxed tea that evening. No true lover of her country and liberty touched or tasted the banned thing. In the hospitable homestead of Mrs. Cynthia Tucker Coleman, not far away from the church, is a portrait of Pocahontas's greatest descendant, John Randolph of Roanoke. It represents him at the age of thirty, at which date he was in Congress. The likeness is as gentle-eyed and sweet of face as that of an amiable boy of seventeen. Pale brown hair, with auburn lights in it, falls low on the forehead. There is not a token, in the serene, contemplative visage and clear eyes, of the morbid wretchedness of which bitter cynicism was the mask. In the same dwelling is kept the silver communion service used in the Jamestown church as far back as 1661. It bears the inscription, in English and Latin, "Mix not holy things with profane." There is also a service presented to "Christ Church, Bruton Parish," by Queen Anne, who, a chronicler affirms, "loved her college." In this home, now tenanted by his greathalf-niece, John Randolph passed much of his early life. One of the fairest pictures conjured up by the magic wand of tradition is that of his beautiful mother-whose portrait faces his from the opposite wall—wearing widow's weeds, and kneeling, with a pretty boy beside her, "his fresh face pressed against her black gown, in the picturesque old church in Williamsburg during a special service of fasting and prayer"; which special occasion, we |