THE CHE MAW A AMERICAN
11
To collect the money was an enormoos task. Appeals for contribu
tions were made to women all over the country. Fifty-eight thousand
dollars was raised by Edward Everett, who, to earn that amount, de
livered a lecture 122 times.
The Masons, to which fraternity Washington belonged, helped sub
stantially. The first payment on the purchase, $18,000 was made in
April, 1858, and not long afterward the entire sum required was pro
cured and paid over, the property being thereupon transferred to the
ownership of the Mt. Vernon Association.
The association is an organization of women. Mt. Vernon as it
stands today owes its existence to women. Men have nothing to do
with its control or ownership, which is vested in a board of regents,
each' state of the Union being represented in this body by one vice
regent. In May every year the ladies who in this capacity represent
the association spend a week at Mt. Vernon and take counsel in regard
to its affairs. There is not room for all of them in the ancient mansion,
and so some of them sleep in the old servants' quarters and others on
cots installed above the spinning-room of long ago. The present
regent is Miss Harriet C. Comegys, of Delaware.
Mt. Vernon today is self supporting. It has an income of about
$20,000 a year, derived mainly from admission fees paid by 70,000
annual visitors. Vegetables, fruit and hay raised on the estate con
tribute something. There is also a dairy and the milk is sold.
Few people took the trouble to visit Mt. Vernon when it was empty
and undergoing a progressive decay. Nowadays it is different. The
place looks almost exactly as it did when Washington lived there. If
his ghost were to revisit the mansion it would find things but slightly
altered. The house is in all important respects as he left it. Most of
the old furniture remains, having been returned by various heirs and
other persons who came into posession of it. Even the crockery and
the silverware are the very pieces that Martha Washington knew so
well and used so often.
Various states of the Union have taken pride in furnishing one or an
other of the rooms. Thus, for instance, the bedroom formerly occupied
by Nellie Curtis is now known as the "Maryland room," because it
owes its "ameublement" chiefly to patriotic Maryland women who have
contributed authentic Mount Vernon relics for its adornment. The
"New Jersey room" is the chamber in which the Marquis de Lafayette
is understood to have slept when he was General Washington's guest.
Perhaps the only thing with which the former master would find fault
is the arrangement of the lower floor of the mansion, which has been
transformed into a sort of museum of Washington memorabilia.
What deserves most emphasis, however, is the admirable preservation