March 4, 1797
11:45 P.M.
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

It was a windswept, raw March morning and the city looked bleak and dreary as it shivered under the overcast sky. But the man who stood at the window of his study in the large house on Market Street didn't hear the rattling of the wind against the panes or even feel the persistent draft that penetrated between the window frame and sill. He was staring unseeingly into the street.

In his mind he was hundreds of miles away and just arriving at Mount Vernon. Eagerly he pictured the last few minutes of that journey. The carriage would gather speed as the horses galloped up the winding road. Then they'd round the bend and it would be there ... the great house, gleaming and white in the afternoon sun.

For years he'd looked forward to that homecoming. Several times during severe illness he'd thought that he wouldn't live to enjoy Mount Vernon. But now the hour was at hand. Now he could go home.

He was a tall man who still carried himself impressively well. When he was twenty-six an Indian chief had exclaimed that he walked straighter than any brave in the tribe. At sixty-five he'd begun to bend forward a little like a giant tree that could no longer resist the battering force of the wind.

The width of his shoulders was still there, although the shoulders no longer suggested the agile strength that had once made him seem near godlike to an army. The long white hair was caught in a silk net at the nape of his neck. The black velvet suit and pearl-colored vest had become almost a uniform. The days of blues and scarlets were behind him.

He was so absorbed in his thoughts that he didn't hear the light tap on the study door, nor did he note when the door opened. For a long moment Patsy stood surveying him intently. To her worried eyes he seemed weary and gaunt. But beneath the concern a current of joy rippled and danced through her. Her fears had been groundless! For eight years a persistent instinct had nagged her that something would happen to him ... that he wouldn't live to go home with her ... but she'd been wrong. Thank the dear, dear God, she'd been wrong.

She was a short woman. The gently rounded figure that had once made her seem doll-like had thickened into solid matronly lines. Still, she moved with a quick, light step and from under her morning cap silvery ringlets lined her forehead giving her a disarmingly youthful look. Long ago she'd explained to the man she was watching that even though her name was Martha, her father had dubbed her Patsy because he thought Martha too serious and weighty. Now this man was almost the only one left who called her Patsy.

She started across the room and went up to him. "Are you ready to go?" she asked. "It's getting late."

He turned quickly, looked puzzled for an instant, then wrenched himself back into the present. With a sheepish expression he reached for his black military hat and yellow kid gloves. "Indeed after professing to have longed for this day, it would seem unfit to be tardy for my deliverance," he commented wryly. He pulled on his gloves then sighed, "It really is over, isn't it, Patsy?"

For a moment her expression became anxious. "You don't mind giving up, do you, my dear? You're surely not sorry that you didn't accept another term."

He put his hat under his arm and now his eyes twinkled. "My dear, if John Adams is as happy to enter this office as I am to leave it, he must be the happiest man in the world."

Lightly he touched his lips to her cheek. "I won't be long," he told her, "and then if Lady Washington will not mind spending her afternoon with a private citizen ..."

"I wish I were going with you now," she said.

He shook his head. "Since Mrs. Adams couldn't be here to watch John take the oath of office, your presence might point up her absence."

Then he was gone. His valet, Christopher, was waiting downstairs to open the front door. Usually Christopher said, "Good-bye, Mr. President," but now he only bowed. The words had trembled and died on his lips as he realized that he would never be saying them again. But after he closed the door behind the tall old gentleman, he whispered softly, "Good-bye, Mr. President."

The wind whipped around the wide-rimmed black hat. He raised his hand to steady it, then quickly braced himself and with a rapid stride started down the block. A small cluster of people were waiting on the street just beyond the grounds of the executive mansion. They bowed and he nodded to them. He heard their footsteps behind him as he turned in the direction of Federal Hall.

The full blast of the March gale pushed hard against him and he leaned forward slightly. He had a fleeting thought that he should have ordered the carriage, but it was a relatively short walk and there was something about going to this ceremony on foot that appealed to him. It was less obtrusive and he wanted to be unobtrusive now.

Maybe he needed this bit of solitude, too. One had to adjust to the end of the road as thoroughly as one adjusted to its beginning.

The beginning ... In a way it seemed only yesterday that his mother had warned him about always dreaming and never accomplishing. But it wasn't yesterday. That was over fifty years ago when he was a lad of twelve or thirteen and back at Ferry Farm.

The coldness of the March air faded into the bleak chill of a forbidding parlor. The crunching of his boots became the tapping of his foot on the uncarpeted floorboards. The stark branches of the trees took on the appearance of the depressing furniture in his mother's home.

He was absorbed in the memory of that home as he continued on the last walk he would ever take as President of the United States....