MOUNT VERNON, a city and the county-seat of Knox county, Ohio, U.S.A., on the Kokosing river, about 45 m. N.E. of Columbus. Pop. (1890), 6027; (1900), 6633, including 359 foreign-born and 239 negroes; (1910), 9087. Mount Vernon is served by the Baltimore & Ohio and the Cleveland, Akron & Columbus, railways. The city is the seat of the state hospital for tuberculosis, has a fine court-house, a public library, and various manufacturing establishments. Natural gas is found in the vicinity. Mount Vernon was laid out in 1805; it became the county-seat in 1807, was incorporated as a town in 1845, and became a city in 1853.
MOUNT VERNON, the former home of George Washington, in Fairfax county, Virginia, U.S.A., on the Potomac river, 15 m. below Washington, D.C., reached by steamer from Washington and by electric railway from Alexandria, Virginia. The mansion-house, which is the centre of interest, stands on a bluff overlooking the river. The house is built of wood, but the siding is of wide thick boards so panelled as to give the appearance of cut and dressed stonework. The rooms contain much of the furniture which was in them when they were occupied by General Washington and his family; and the furniture that had been lost has been in part replaced by other furniture of historic interest and of the style in use in Washington’s day. In the main hall hangs a glass casket containing the key to the Bastille which Washington received from Lafayette in 1790. From each end of the house a curved colonnade and a pavement lead westerly to a row of out-buildings which partially enclose a bowling green and spacious lawn with shaded drives and walks, and beautiful gardens (with trees planted by Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, Lafayette and others). A short distance south-west of the mansion-house and between it and the wharf is a plain brick tomb, which was built by Washington’s direction on a site chosen by himself, and contains the remains of Washington and Mrs Washington (removed to this tomb from the old family vault in 1831), and of about thirty relatives—members of the Washington, Blackburn, Corbin, Bushrod, Lewis and Custis families.
The estate, originally called “Little Hunting Creek Plantation,” was devised in 1676 by John Washington (the first of the family in America) to his son, Lawrence, who in turn devised it to his daughter, Mildred, by whom (and her husband Roger Gregory) it was deeded in 1726 to her brother Augustine (George Washington’s father). On Augustine’s death (1743) it passed to Lawrence (George’s half-brother), who built in 1743 the villa which forms the middle portion of the present mansion-house and named the estate Mount Vernon, in honour of his former commander, Admiral Edward Vernon (1684–1757). Lawrence left it (1752) to his widow Anne Fairfax (who in the same year married George Lee) with the proviso that it should pass at her death to George Washington, who meanwhile rented the estate, gaining full possession at her death in 1761. In 1784–1785 he enlarged the villa into the mansion-house with its present dimensions by building an addition at each end, erected several of the out-buildings, and adorned the grounds, all according to his own plans and specifications. At General Washington’s death (1799) Mount Vernon passed to his widow; at her death (1802) it passed to his nephew, Bushrod Washington, and at Bushrod Washington’s death (1829) to his nephew John Augustine Washington, who devised it in 1832 to his widow, by whom it was devised in 1835 to their son John A. Washington. This last was authorized by his father’s will to sell the estate to the United States government, and in 1847 offered the property for $100,000, but the offer was refused. In 1860 the mansion-house and 200 acres of the original estate, fast falling into decay, were bought for $200,000 (much of which had been raised through the efforts of Edward Everett) by the Mount Vernon Ladies Association of the Union. This association under its charter (1856) bound itself to restore the estate as far as possible to the condition in which it was in the lifetime of Washington and to keep it sacred to his memory, and Virginia agreed to exempt it from taxation as long as these terms were fulfilled.
See B. J. Lossing, The Home of Washington: or Mount Vernon and its Associations (Hartford, 1870).
MOURNING (from the verb “to mourn,” to be sorrowful,
O. Eng. murnan; cf. O.H.G. mornēn, Goth. maurnan, to be
anxious, O.N. morna, to pine away; by some referred to root
seen in Gr. μέριμνα, sorrow, by others to root mer-, to die), the
expression of grief or sorrow particularly for the dead; more
specifically the outward or conventional signs of such grief.
The public exhibition of this grief for the dead has taken
various forms among different races and in different ages, from
shaving of the head, or allowing the beard and hair to grow,
from disfiguring the face and uttering loud wailing cries, to the
wearing of clothes of a particular colour, now among Western
races usually black, and to the purely conventional custom of
using black-edged note-paper, cards, &c. (See further
Funeral Rites.)
MOUSE, in its original sense probably the name of the semi-domesticated house-mouse (Mus musculus), the type of the genus Mus and of the family Muridae. Zoologically, there is no distinction between mice and rats; these names being employed respectively for most or all of the smaller and larger “mouse-like” and “rat-like” representatives of the Muridae, whether they belong to the genus Mus or not. It is true indeed that in zoological nomenclature some of these are distinguished as “voles” (see Vole), but this is not in accord with popular usage, where such creatures come under the designation either of water-rats or field-mice. The distinctive characters of the typical mice (and rats), i.e. those included in the genus Mus, are dealt with in the article Rodentia. With the exception of Madagascar, the genus Mus ranges over practically the whole of the Old World, having indigenous representatives even in Australasia; while the house-mouse, with man’s involuntary aid, has succeeded in establishing itself throughout the civilized world. The following is a brief notice of the species of true mice (that is to say, those generally included in the genus Mus) inhabiting the British Isles. These are three in number, M. musculus, the house-mouse, originally a native of Central Asia, the wood or long-tailed field-mouse, is a species common in many parts of England, often taking to barns and out-houses for shelter during the winter. It is of about the same size and proportions as M. musculus but of a bright reddish-grey colour, with a pure white belly. M. minutus, the harvest-mouse, is the smallest of the European mice, seldom exceeding 212 or 3 in. in length; and of a yellowish-red colour, with comparatively short ears and tail. It lives entirely away from houses, commonly taking up its abode in wheat or hay fields, where it builds a round grass nest about the size of a cricket-ball, in which it brings up its young. Its range extends from England to Japan. In regard to the first it is noteworthy that house-mice isolated on a small sandbank near Dublin have developed a special colouring of their own; also that distinct local varieties, M. musculus muralis and M. faeröensis, inhabit respectively St Kilda and the Faeroes. In Central Asia there exists a wild mouse (M. bactrianus), and likewise a second species (M. wagneri), allied to M. musculus; while there is third kind (M. gentilis), also nearly related, in the deserts of North Africa. According to Major G. E. H. Barrett-Hamilton it is probable that M. bactrianus and M. musculus are respectively desert and house modifications descended from some Central Asian ancestor more or less nearly allied to M. wagneri. As regards the other two British species, it must suffice to say that there are several local races of each; Mus sylvaticus being represented by several in the British Isles, although there is but one representative of M. minutus. It may be added that by some naturalists both M. sylvaticus and M. minutus are separated from Mus as Micromys.
See G. E. H. Barrett-Hamilton, “Note on the Harvest-Mice of the Palaearctic,” Annals and Magazine of Nat. History (April 1899); “On the Species of the genus Mus inhabiting St Kilda” Proc. Zool. Soc. (London, 1899); “On Geographical and Individual Variation in Mus sylvaticus and its Allies,” op. cit. (1900); W. E. Clarke, “On forms of Mus musculus with Description of a New Subspecies from the Faeroe Islands,” Proc. Roy. Phys. Soc. (Edinburgh, 1904), vol. xv. (R. L.*)
