uncIiaJknged bf the ambitious youngsters. Anticipating 
the next turn in the chase, Lord Fairfax cuts obliquely 
through a little copse, and coming out on the other side 
sees the fox, dead beat, tongue out and brush dragging, 
not a dozen paces in front of the fleet Blueskin, who 
opens a wide gap between himself and the pack, as he 
closes on his quarry, The next moment he is upon 
him. A snap, a turn, a roll, and "it's all over with 
Reynard. 
The next moment the young surveyor was off his 
horse, and diving down amid the scrambling pack 
straightened up again with the fox, grinning in grim 
death, in one hand and his hat in the other, waving and 
whooping in boyish excitement to the equally frantic 
dogs that fawned and leaped upon him. And then his 
enthvisiasm subsided suddenly, as Lord Fairfax flashed 
upon his view, and he realized that there was a spectator 
to his frenzy. But the old sportsman quicklj' reassured 
him. Springing from liis horse, he grasped his hand 
warmly, and told him that the sentiment did him honor, 
that it proved him a true sportsman and that '.le w li 
glad to renew his own youth in the acqnain'ran.-.e of such 
a congenial nature. And then, whipping off the brush, 
he danced about exuberantly, laughing amid the having 
pack until, having tantalized them sufficiently, he flung 
the fox to them with the time-honored cry, "T^ar 'im 
and eat 'im." 
This interesting rite performed with due ceremonial, 
and his favorite Blueskin duly caressed, his lordship 
turned to present the brush to his young friend, and it 
occurring to him for the first time, asked who the devil 
his young friend was anyhow. 
Having a letter of introduction to his lordship in his 
portmanteau, the young gentleman turned to procure 
it, but alas, Ajax had parted company with the portman- 
teau some five miles back, and he was compelled to sim- 
ply introduce himself as George Washington, the j^oung 
brother of Lawrence Washington, who had married the 
daughter of Mr. William Fairfax, his lordship's cousin. 
But it is doubtful if any letter of introduction could 
have had the influence upon this eccentric sportsman that 
the spirit the youth had displayed in the chase effected. 
From that moment, despite their disparity in years, they 
were fast friends, a friendship which meant much to 
young George Washington, and through him was des- 
tined to affect the history of the world. Step by step we 
can trace the influence of Lord Fairfax upon the career 
of Washington. Lord Fairfax had inherited from his 
grandfather, Lord Culpepper, all the land lying between 
the Potomac and Rapphannock rivers, comprising some 
six -million acres. As yet no surveyor's chain had ever 
been carried over any portion of his broad domains west 
of the Blue Ridge, and including the now famous and 
fertile "Valley of Virginia." 
Washington spent the fall and winter fox hunting with 
Lord Fairfax, and preparing for his trip into this terra 
incognita. In March he set out, and acquitted himself 
so well that Lord Fairfax had him appointed public sur- 
veyor upon his return. His report of the country was so 
glowing that Lord Fairfax visited it himself, and was 
equally enraptured with that beautiful valley to which 
the Indians had given the name of Shenandoah, "Daugh- 
ter of the Stars." On a green knoll overshadowed by an- 
cient forest trees, about twelve miles from the present 
town of Winchester, the old sportsman erected a hunt- 
ing lodge in the wilderness, and gave up to his cousin, 
William Fairfax, his grand manor on the Potomac, as he 
had years before given his vast estates in England to his 
brother. To me there is something pathetic in his retiring 
step by step from the world, the habits, the companions 
and kinsmen of his youth, until in his lonely old age this 
generous hearted sportsman buried himself in the wilder- 
ness. He was no moody misanthrope, nor ascetic hermit 
practicing a repellant philosophy, but seemed to have 
fathomed the frivolities of life, and as he grew older 
found true happiness in simplest pleasures. His ex- 
periences with the painted beauties of King George's court 
in his youth seemed to have sufficed for him the rest -of 
his life, and I shrewdly suspect that the female members 
of William Fairfax's family, who resided with him at 
Belvotr, mav have had something to do with the old 
bachelor's abandoning that manor and taking to the 
woods. Certain it is that none of the sex ever came to 
his last retreat, Greenway Court, which was an Eveless 
Eden. 
It was still standing in Washington Irving's time, who 
has described it as a long stone building one story m 
height, with dormer windows, two belfries, immense 
chimneys, studded with swallow and marten coops, and a 
roof sloping down in the old Virginia fashion into low 
projecting eaves that formed a veranda the whole length 
of the house — a typical fox hunter's retreat. About 
the knoll were outhouses for his numerous servants, black 
and white, with stables for his hunters, and kennels for 
his hounds. It was in the center of a beautifully kept 
park of ten thousand acres. ■ Irving has recorded as an 
instance of his eccentricity that he never slept in the main 
house, but lodged apart in a small wooden cottage con- 
taining a single bedroom. According to the tradition, I 
have heard there never was room for Lord Fairfax in his 
own house, which was given up to his guests. The fame 
of his hospitality and sportsmanship gathered about him 
the sport loving gentry of old Virginia, who not only 
found pleasure with him in the field, but instruction and 
improvement as well in the society and conversation of 
a man of literarv taste and culture who had mingled m 
the best society' and associated with the most learned 
intellects of Europe. He had brought his books with 
him into the wilderness, and from Washington's diary 
we find that it was here, in the interludes of fox hunting, 
he read the historv of England and the "Spectator." In- 
dians half-breeds and leather-clad woodsmen loitered 
about Greenway Court, and shared its hospitality with the 
stately gentry, the whole combining to form a picture of 
baronial state that we find some difficulty in reconciling 
With democratic America. Although occupying pretty 
much the position of a feudal lord, a greater benefactor 
to his people never lived than this old fox hunter. His 
kinsmea were not the only sharers of his generosity, but 
many a rich estate in the Shenandoah Valley to-day can 
be traced back to a gift from Lord Fairfax to some poor 
and deserving settler. , „ , . , j- • , 
The famous watering place of Bath, with its medicinal 
springs, was his present to the people. He devoted his 
mm and money to builditig foads ajid other public im- 
provements. He led a peaceful, happy, benefixial life and 
look no part in the little competitions, factions and de- 
bates of mankind, either in politics, or war. Consequently 
the historian has done his whole duty by Lord Fairfax in 
a three-line notice that he once existed, and was "eccen- 
tric." What a commentary ! If to triumph over the 
temptations of wealth and position, to be pure and simple 
in heart, noble in thought, and unselfish, indeed be eccen- 
tric, then I will admit his eccentricity, and love him for 
it, as indeed did every one with whom he came in con- 
tact, from old Peter, whom he abused for his incom- 
petency in the field, but pampered and put up with, to 
George Washington, the Father of his Country, who re- 
ceived from him his start in life, I have no doubt that 
the wits and Beau Brummels of the London coffee 
houses, the very brother to whom he had given his 
English estates, were equally convinced of his eccentricity, 
and I suspect there are some utilitarians of to-day who 
would find his passion for fox hunting proof of eccen- 
tricitj^ but the sport loving Virginians of the last century 
took to the new sport with eager avidity and with a pack 
recruited from his kennels set up for themselves all over 
t the Old Dominion. 
Blueskin, who was at the head of Lord Fairfax's ken- 
nels, was the progenitor of them all, and the prepotency 
of his blood is apparent even to this day in the pure old 
strain of Virginia fox hounds, whose distinguishing 
characteristic in color is blue ticked. Many years after 
old Buckskin had gone the way of all flesh, Washington 
had a horse and a hound, both named after the old dog. 
His registers containing the names, ages, and marks of 
his horses and hounds are still preserved at Mount 
Vernon. From his diary we find that he procured a pack 
shortly after marrying the widow Custis, and settling 
down to live at Mount Vernon. To me there is something 
delightful and relieving, after gazing up at the lofty 
pedestal upon which the apotheosized Washington has 
been placed by the historians, to turn over these musty 
manuscripts and find he was just a plain, every-day fox 
hunter who had the same triumphs and defeats, the same 
joys and sorrows in the field that we ordinary mortals 
have. I wish he had not been so brief in his diary. I 
find that Lord Fairfax, who was then seventy years old, 
was his most frequent companion in the chase. How I 
wish he had written the full details of that week in No- 
vember Avhen Lord Fairfax came to hunt with him at 
Mount Vernon ; but I suppose he did not have much time 
for writing. He recites how he and Lord Fairfax and Mr. 
Grayson and Phil Alexander and Mr. Wilson and Young 
Bryan Fairfax, who, upon the death of his lordship's 
brother in England, wdthout heirs, became the eighth 
Lord Fairfax, went hunting on Nov. 25 and "catched a 
fox." They were hearty four-bottle fellows in those 
days, and if a fox hunter after a hard day afield is a 
little drowsy, and loose m gram.mar in his private diary, I 
love him all the more for it. I know he is a sportsrnan, 
and that entry was never intended to be read by tea 
drinking old maids. The entry of Nov. 26 is even briefer, 
and I fear they did not "catched a fox," or if they did, his 
recollection was rather hazy when he came to post his 
diary as was his invariable custom before tumbling into 
bed, as the entry on that day and the four subsequent 
days simply recite the fact that he was hunting with the 
same company. I'll wager that when the company de- 
parted at the end of the week there were many empties 
among the thirty-five dozen bottles he mentions having 
bottled some time before. And if young Bryan Fairfax 
endeavored to hold his own in that seasoned company, I'll 
bet the butler knew how he got to bed better than he 
did himself. 
Upon the breaking out of the French and Indian war, 
Braddock, the bon vivant, who had come out from London 
to exterminate the savages, visited his old friend at 
Greenway Court, and it was to Lord Fairfax's recom- 
mendation that Washington was indebted for his com- 
mission in that campaign. We all know how much better 
it had been for Braddock had he paid more attention to 
that recommendation, and placed more reliance on the 
young soldier's advice. Braddock's death and defeat are 
a matter of history. The back settlements of Virginia lay 
at the mercy of the marauding savages. Murder and 
rapine stalked through the land. Several settlers in the 
Shenandoah Valley fell beneath the tomahawk, and the 
rest prepared to fly. The friends of Lord Fairfax, 
fearing for his safety, urged him to retire to the lower 
settlements. Greenway Court was a tempting prize for 
pliinder, and he was considered by the Indians a great 
chief whose scalp would be a fine trophy. But the high- 
spirited old nobleman determined to stand by his home 
in the wilderness. To all his friends' entreaties he re- 
plied : 
"I am an old man, and it is of little importance whether 
I fall by the tomahawk or die by the infirmities of old 
age." 
His courageous example was of inestimable influence. 
The panic stricken hunters and settlers rallied round him. 
Militia companies were formed, and the marauding bands 
driven back, and the beautiful Shenandoah Valley which 
he had been at such pains and cost to settle, was saved by 
the old fox hunter's bold stand from the torch and scalp- 
ing knife. 
Time ran on in sun and shade, and the octogenarian 
sportsman peacefully drifted down the tide of time, his 
heart and hand and purse ever open to the unfortunate. 
The Revolution broke out. and his young friends in whose 
society he had renewed his own j'outh, saddled their 
hunters, and let loose the dogs of w^ar, some on one side, 
some on the other. But to the old man the fiercest thun- 
ders of the conflict were but as the distant rumble of a 
passing shower on the far horizon of a summer day. So 
well was he beloved tliat his retirement was respected 
b}' all, and his privacy never disturbed by either side. In 
the midst of war his sands of life ran out in peace. 
Thomas, the sixth Baron Fairfax of Cameron, born a 
British nobleman. 1690, died at GreenVvay Court an Amer- 
ican citizen. 1782. Francis J. Hag.*iN-. 
4§^ 
Men We Sometimes Meet, 
I. 
Thf man who reasons, I don't see any fun in it my- 
self, therefore it is not really and truly sport. 
Things that Creep and Crawl. 
Politically life in Samoa is closely associated -with 
that remarkable epic, "The Hunting of the Snark." I 
have had to watch aghast so much of the hunting of that 
mythical animal in daily terror lest it prove a boojtim, 
which it always did, accompanied by the plaintive shrieks 
of the jub-jub bird and the moans of the frumious Ban- 
dersnatch, that m}' gristle rises at the familiar lines. But 
it is not only in diplomacy that the verse applies. In 
one of the fyttes of that sevenfold agony there is one 
simply and sweetly pathetic line, which applies: 
''Then strange creepy creatures crawled out of their holes." 
That's the domestic side of Samoan life — that's house- 
keeping in the islands, a never-ending war against the 
creepers and the crawlers. 
■'My word!" Dosie Gurr used to say in the Colonial 
dialect, for she was a New Zealander, "it's like tiking a 
blooming course in zoology to live here." That's Eng- 
lish as she is spoke by our Colonial cousins. "Ask the 
lidy if she'll tike a piece of cike" is Australian English, 
hard to understand until you get used to it. Dosie Gurr 
was right in this. I never knew whether I was living in 
what was really the best house in Samoa or was an in- 
mate of a zoolosrical garden. 
To appreciate the situation it is needful to know some- 
thing of the house in Vaiala — "the maota in the malae of 
Lelepa," as I had to describe it in all Samoan letters. 
There were inner arrangements for sleeping and for the 
transaction of the Consul-General's official business, which 
seemed to consist mainl}^ in smoking vast quantities of 
native tobacco in banana leaf cheroots and in ceremonious 
drinking of the harmless but soapsuddy-looking kava in 
the effort to match one set of native intrigue against the 
other. All told, these needs used up less than half of the 
space under roof. The better two-thirds was veranda, on 
which the daily and synodic travel of the sun left drifting 
areas of charming shade. A section of veranda, imper- 
manently latticed off like the Hawaiian lanais, made the 
dining room, and most of the zoological research was 
conducted in that segment of the domestic economy, for 
natural history and meals together are bound to make 
an impression. 
From the beginning I was told not to walk on cer- 
tain portions of the veranda because of the ants. Tonga 
used to call out after me, "Ta fefe i loi ma loata!" I 
don't like ants in my sugar bowl, but I never was afraid 
of them, as my maid's words would seem to imply in 
warning. Because it was the country custom, I had the 
legs of the dining table and the meat safe set in empty 
beef tins of corrosive sublimate, which it was the cook Ijoy's 
duty to replenish every Monday morning. That offered 
some prospect of keeping the ants out of the butter until 
they had triangulated the range of the table with an iru- 
sect wisdom in geodesy, after which it was easy for them 
to climb on the ceiling to the exact spot which would 
allow them to tumble in the half-melted butter with which 
one must oil the food in an iceless tropical habitation. 
Wise birds, these ants, when it comes to getting in the 
way of dining humanity. But Tonga's warning meant 
more than that. Tonga was not at all fastidious as to 
this or any other combination of dinner and zoology. She 
had in mind to warri me against a more serious inroad. 
What that was I soon found out. She had shouted to 
me to look out for ants in a certain spot of the flooring, 
and I had disregarded the warning, because I had not 
yet learned to fear the tiny ant. All of a sudden the floor- 
ing vanished beneath my step, and instead of finding a 
place to walk on, there was a yawning gap in the plank- 
ing. Then I knew what was meant. The ants are not 
only after butter and such things to eat — they go for house 
timbers and riddle the planks. It is often the case that 
they will cut out a board from end to end and leave no 
outward sign, for they never touch paint. When you are 
least expecting it the solid plank is really but a hollow 
sham, which the least pressure will break through. In 
any boarded house in Samoa that is over five years old, it 
is just as easy to walk out through the wall anywhere as 
it is at the door, and that the ants have done. Tonga's 
caution meant: "I'm afraid of the loi and the loata." 
Except for the slight and graduated difference in size, it 
was not possible to distinguish between the loi and loata, 
both being common house ants. Both were red and both 
were minute, and one was as destructive as the other, 
neither being as large as the common red ant of America. 
Although they eat your house out from under you they 
render good service as scavengers. I have seen cases 
where a dead rat was reduced to shining and harmless 
bones in less than an hour by the well-directed efforts of 
these inconspicuous cleaners. 
After a long residence in New York, I felt on terms o{ 
intimate acquaintance with cockroaches, as I erroneously 
named the common water bug. The stories of South 
Sea travelers that they had been forced to sink their "ves- 
sels to rid them of the pest I viewed with complacent ap- 
preciation of their skill in mendacity. But after I came 
to know the real cockroach, the Blatta orientalis, I was 
convinced that these stories were mild— if they had men- 
tioned a ton of dvnamite I should have believed it too 
mild a remedy to be efl'ectual. One day I was called on 
to open the locker in which the tinned provisions were 
kept, for I never had a Samoan visitor who could not 
dispose of a pound can-of corned beef or salmon while 
waiting for the cook boy to prepare him something to 
eat. On the inner side of the door was the slough of a 
cockroach about an inch and a half long, and alongside 
of It was a cream-colored monster all of 3 inches in 
length. It looked buggy, but it was a new thing in my 
experience, and T called for some one to explain the mys- 
tery. The cook boy came running up, and as soon as he 
saw what was the trouble he looked on, me with scorn 
Mitaek regarded the other member of the household as 
his official superior, and was apt to treat me with scant 
courtesy, after the manner of each of the craft of our na- 
tive servants, who refused to consider other than their 
specific duties. Mitaele's duty was to cook, and as cock- 
roaches were not cookable he felt that he had unneces- 
sarily been called from his proper duties. However he 
explained: "O ie mongamoga mate lenei, ua ola lea." 
