CHAPTER IV.

SCHOOL-DAYS.

THE story of George Washington's struggle with the colt must belong to his older boyhood, when he was at home on a vacation; for we have seen that he had to have his pony led when he was nine years old; and after his father's death, which occurred when he was eleven, he went away to school. When Augustine Washington died, he divided his several estates among his children; but his widow was to have the oversight of the portions left to the younger children until they should come of age. Lawrence Washington received an estate called Hunting Creek, located near a stream of the same name which flowed into the Potomac ; and Augustine, his brother, received the old homestead near Bridge's Creek; the mother and younger children continued to live near Fredericksburg.

Both Lawrence and Augustine Washington married soon after their father's death, and as there chanced to be a good school near Bridge's Creek, George Washington now made his home with his brother Augustine, staying with him till he was nearly sixteen years old.

He was to be, like his father, a Virginian planter; and I suppose that had something to do with the kind of training which Mr. Williams, the school-master at Bridge's Creek, gave him. At any rate, it is easy to see what he studied. Most boys' copy-books and exercise-books are early destroyed, but it chances that those of George Washington have been kept, and they are very interesting. The handwriting in them is the first thing to be noticed, round, fair, and bold, the letters large like the hand that formed them, and the lines running straight and even. In the arithmetics and book-keeping manuals which we study at school, there are printed forms of receipts, bills, and other ordinary business papers; but in Washington's school days, the teacher probably showed the boys how to draw these up, and gave them, also, copies of longer papers, like leases, deeds, and wills. There were few lawyers in the colony, and every gentleman was expected to know many forms of documents which in these days are left to our lawyers.

Washington's exercise-books have many pages of these forms, written out carefully by the boy. Sometimes he made ornamental letters such as clerks were wont to use in drawing up such papers. This was not merely exercise in penmanship; it was practice work in all that careful keeping of accounts and those business methods which were sure to be needed by one who had to manage a great plantation. George Washington was to manage something greater, though he did not then know it; and the habits which he formed at this time were of inestimable value to him in his manhood.

The manuscript book which contains these exercises has also a list of a hundred and ten "Rules of Civility and Decent Behavior in Company and Conversation." They were probably not made up by the boy, but copied from some book or taken down from the lips of his mother or teacher. They sound rather stiff to us, and we should be likely to think the boy a prig who attempted to be governed by them; but it was a common thing in those days to set such rules before children, and George Washington, with his liking for regular, orderly ways which is evident in his handwriting-probably used the rules and perhaps committed them to memory, to secure an even temper and self-control. Here are a few of them:

"Every action in company ought to be with some sign of respect to those present.

"When you meet with one of greater quality than yourself, stop and retire, especially if it be at a door or any strait place, to give way for him to pass.

"They that are in dignity or in office have in all places precedency; but whilst they are young, they ought to respect those that are their equals in birth or other qualities, though they have no public charge.

"Strive not with your superiors in argument, but always submit your judgment to others with modesty.

"Be not hasty to believe flying reports to the disparagement of any.

"Take all admonitions thankfully, in what time or place soever given; but afterwards, not being culpable, take a time or place convenient to let him know it that gave them.

"Think before you speak; pronounce not im

"Speak not evil of the absent, for it is unjust. "Make no show of taking great delight in your victuals; feed not with greediness; cut your bread with a knife; lean not on the table; neither find fault with what you eat.

"Be not angry at table, whatever happens, and if you have reason to be so, show it not; put on a cheerful countenance, especially if there be strangers, for good humor makes one dish of meat a feast. "Let your recreations be manful, not sinful. "Labor to keep alive in your breast that little spark of celestial fire called conscience."

These are not unwise rules; they touch on things great and small. The difficulty with most boys would be to follow a hundred and ten of them. They serve, however, to show what was the standard of good manners and morals among those who had the training of George Washington. But, after all, the best of rules would have done little with poor stuff; it was because this boy had a manly and honorable spirit that he could be trained in manly and honorable ways. He was a passionate but not a vicious boy, and so, since his passion was kept under control, he was all the stronger for it. The boy that could throw a stone across the Rappahannock was taught to be gentle, and not violent; the tamer of the blooded sorrel colt controlled himself, and that was the reason he could control his horse.

With all his strength and agility, George Washington was a generous and fair-minded boy; otherwise he would not have been chosen, as he often was, to settle the disputes of his companions. He was a natural leader. In his boyhood there was plenty of talk of war. What is known as King George's War had just broken out between the English and the French; and there were always stories of fights with the Indians in the back settlements. It was natural, therefore, that boys should play at fighting, and George Washington had his small military company, which he drilled and maneuvered.

Besides, his brother Lawrence had been a soldier, and he must have heard many tales of war when he visited him. Thus it came about that he was for throwing his books aside and entering His Majesty's service. He was, however, too young for the army he was only fifteen but Lawrence Washington encouraged him, and as he knew many officers in the navy, he had no difficulty in obtaining for his young brother a warrant as midshipman in the navy.

It is said that the young middy's luggage was

when Madam Washington, who had all along been reluctant to have her son go to sea, now declared finally that she could not give her consent to the scheme. He was still young and at school; perhaps, also, this Virginian lady, living in a country where the people were not much used to the sea, looked with concern at a profession which would take her oldest boy into all the perils of the ocean. The influence which finally decided her to refuse her consent is said to have been this letter, which she received from her brother, then in England:

"I understand that you are advised, and have some thoughts of putting your son George to sea. I think he had better be put apprentice to a tinker, for a common sailor before the mast has by no means the common liberty of the subject; for they will press him from a ship where he has fifty shillings a month, and make him take twentythree, and cut and slash, and use him like a negro, or rather like a dog. And, as to any considerable preferment in the navy, it is not to be expected, as there are always so many gaping for it here who have interest, and he has none. And if he should get to be master of a Virginia ship (which it is very difficult to do), a planter that has three or four hundred acres of land, and three or four slaves, if he be industrious, may live more comfortably, and leave his family in better bread, than such a master of a ship can.'

"

It seems possible from this letter that the plan was to put George into the navy that he might come to command a merchant ship; but however that may be, the plan was given up, and the boy went back to school for another year. During that time he applied himself especially to the study of surveying. In a country of great estates, and with a new, almost unexplored territory coming into the hands of planters, surveying was a very important occupation. George Washington, with his love of exactness and regularity, his orderly ways and his liking for outdoor life, was greatly attracted by the art. Five or six years must elapse before he could come into possession of the property which his father had left him; his mother was living on it and managing it. Meanwhile, the work of surveying land would give him plenty of occupation, and bring him in money; so he studied geometry and trigonometry; he made calculations, and he surveyed all the fields about the school-house, plotting them and setting down everything with great exactness.

I wonder if his sudden diligence in study and outdoor work was due at all to an affair which happened about this time. He was a tall, largelimbed, shy boy of fifteen when he fell in love with a girl whom he seems to have met when living with his brother Augustine. He calls her, in one of his letters afterward, a "lowland beauty," and tradition makes her to have been a Miss Grimes, who later married, and was the mother of one of the young soldiers who served under Washington in the War for Independence. Whatever may have been the exact reason that his love affair did not

prosper — whether he was too shy to make his mind known, or so silent as not to show himself to advantage, or so discreet with grave demeanor as to hold himself too long in reserve, it is impossible now to say; but I suspect that one effect was to make him work the harder. Sensible people do not expect boys of fifteen to be playing the lover; and George Washington was old for his years, and not likely to appear like a spooney.

CHAPTER V.

MOUNT VERNON AND BELVOIR.

ALTHOUGH, after his father's death, George Washington went to live with his brother Augustine for the sake of going to Mr. Williams's school, he was especially under the care of his eldest brother. Lawrence Washington, like other oldest sons of Virginia planters, was sent to England to be educated. After his return to America, there was war between England and Spain, and Admiral Vernon of the English navy captured one of the Spanish towns in the West Indies. The people in the American colonies looked upon the West Indies somewhat differently from the way in which we regard them at present. Not only were some of the islands on the map of America, but like the colonies, they were actually a part of the British possessions. A brisk trade was kept up between them and the mainland; and indeed, the Bermudas were once within the bounds of Virginia.

So, when Admiral Vernon needed reënforcements, he very naturally looked to the colonies close at hand. A regiment was to be raised and sent out to Jamaica as part of the British forces. Lawrence Washington, who was a spirited young fellow, obtained a commission as captain in a company of this regiment, and went to the West Indies, where he fought bravely in the engagements which followed. When the war was over he returned to Virginia, so in love with his new profession that he determined to go to England, with the regiment to which his company was attached, and to continue as a soldier in His Majesty's service.

Just then there happened two events which changed his plans and perhaps prevented him from some day fighting against an army commanded by his younger brother. He fell in love with Anne Fairfax, and before they were married, his father died. This left his mother alone with the care of a young family, and made him also at once the owner of a larger estate. His father, as I have said, bequeathed to him Hunting Creek, and there, after his marriage, he went to live, as a planter, like his father before him. For the time, at any

rate, he laid aside his sword, but he kept up his friendship with officers of the army and the navy; and out of admiration for the admiral under whom he had served, he changed the name of his estate from Hunting Creek to Mount Vernon.

The house which Lawrence Washington built was after the pattern of many Virginian houses of the day,-two stories in height, with a porch running along the front, but with its two chimneys, one at each end, built inside instead of outside. Possibly this was a notion which Lawrence Washington brought with him from England; perhaps he did it to please his English bride. The site which he chose was a pleasant one, upon a swelling ridge, wooded in many places, and high above the Potomac, which swept in great curves above and below, almost as far as the eye could see. Beyond, on the other side, were the Maryland fields and woods.

A few miles below Mount Vernon was another plantation, named Belvoir, and it was here that William Fairfax lived, whose daughter Anne had married Lawrence Washington. Fairfax also had been an officer in the English army, and at one time had been governor of one of the Bahama islands. Now he had settled in Virginia, where his family had large landed possessions.

He was a man of education and wealth, and he had been accustomed to plenty of society. He had no mind to bury himself in the backwoods of Virginia, and with his grown-up sons and daughters about him, he made his house the center of gayety. It was more richly furnished than most of the houses of the Virginia planters. The floors were covered with carpets, a great luxury in those days; the rooms were lighted with wax candles; and he had costly wines in his cellars. Servants in livery moved about to wait on the guests, and Virginia gentlemen and ladies flocked to Belvoir. The master of the house was an officer of the King, for he was collector of customs for the colony, and president of the governor's council. British men-of-war sailed up the Potomac and anchored in the stream, and the officers came ashore to be entertained by the Honorable William Fairfax.

The nearness of Mount Vernon and the close connection between the two families led to constant passage between the places. The guests of one were the guests of the other, and George Washington, coming to visit his brother Lawrence, was made at home at Belvoir also. He was a reserved, shy, awkward schoolboy. He was only fifteen when he was thrown into the gay society there, but he was tall, large-limbed, and altogether much older and graver than his years would seem to indicate. He took his place among the men in sports and hunting, and though he was silent and