felicity during the entire course of your mortal existence."


Furthermore, he wrote to an old friend, whose wife stubbornly refused to
sign a deed, "I think, any Gentleman, possessed of but a very moderate
degree of influence with his wife, might, in the course of five or six
years (for I think it is at least that time) have prevailed upon her to do
an act of justice, in fulfiling his Bargains and complying with his
wishes, if he had been really in earnest in requesting the matter of her;
especially, as the inducement which you thought would have a powerful
operation on Mrs. Alexander, namely the birth of a child, has been
doubled, and tripled."

However well Washington thought of "the honorable state," he was
no match-maker, and when asked to give advice to the widow of Jack Custis,
replied, "I never did, nor do I believe I ever shall, give advice to a
woman, who is setting out on a matrimonial voyage; first, because I never
could advise one to marry without her own consent; and, secondly because I
know it is to no purpose to advise her to refrain, when she has obtained
it. A woman very rarely asks an opinion or requires advice on such an
occasion, till her resolution is formed; and then it is with the hope and
expectation of obtaining a sanction, not that she means to be governed by
your disapprobation, that she applies. In a word the plain English of the
application may be summed up in these words: 'I wish you to think as I do;
but, if unhappily you differ from me in opinion, my heart, I must confess,
is fixed, and I have gone too far now to retract.'" Again he wrote:


"It has ever been a maxim with me through life, neither to promote nor to
prevent a matrimonial connection, unless there should be something