which he owned in Stafford county, where he died in 1743. To each of his sons he left a plantation of several hundred acres. To George, at this time eleven years old, was reserved the estate on which he then lived. Four children younger than he constituted a large family of almost infants, to be brought up by the widowed mother. But she was a woman of uncommon character, combining in harmonious proportions all those qualities necessary to make the best and noblest of our species-a good and true mother. George was her eldest born, on whom she was to rely in her old age, and she watched his early development with that solicitude a pious mother only knows. She saw in him those generous and noble traits which afterward distinguished him-marked with pride his manly scorn of a lie, his hatred of wrong and oppression, whatever the forms they took, and his enthusiastic love of the great and the good. But she saw also a bold and impetuous nature, which, when thoroughly roused, was not easily laid—a fearlessness and recklessness of danger, that made her heart tremble, and it was with prayers and earnest teachings, that she sought to place that nature under the control of reason and the law of right. Around that bold and passionate heart she cast ligature after ligature, woven from truth and duty and conscience, and bound them with maternal fondness there, till even its wildest throbbings could not rend them asunder. Right well and faithfully was her work done. It stood the fiery trials of youth, the storms of battle and the temptations of ambition, and when at last, conqueror and hero, he leaned his head, covered with honors, on her aged shoulder, and wept as he bade her farewell to take his place at the head of the republic which he had saved, she reaped the fruit of her labors. How little she knew what destinies hung on her instructions, as that boy stood by her knee and listened to her counsel. With his passions cultivated instead of restrained, and his reflective faculties

and conscience kept in abeyance by his strong impulses, he would have made a great and brilliant man, but never have become the founder of more than an empire and the beacon light of the world.

At this time only thinly populated and widely separated settlements were scattered through Virginia, so that no colleges or high schools had been founded. Parents, therefore, who wished to give their sons a classical education, were compelled to send them to England. If they could not afford to do this, they had to fall back on a private tutor, or a district school in which only the common rudiments of education were taught. To the latter George was sent, and it was well that it happened so. However valuable a thorough education is, the mission George Washington was to fulfill required that he should be wholly one of the people. He could not have been educated in the universities of Europe, without at the same time coming under influences, the whole tendency of which would be to unfit him for the place assigned him by Heaven. Here, amid our primeval forests, in constant intercourse with the hardy settlers, trained in the rough life of the pioneer, and representing in himself the love of the soil, the fearless independence and self-reliance of the people, he became their true representative and leader.

At thirteen years of age we find him sitting in one of those humble school-houses in a Virginia clearing, which still form one of the most distinctive characteristics of our country. Full of lusty life, his shout rings over the fields as he bounds away from his pursuers, or his laugh mingles with the rollicking group, as they wrestle and leap and toss the bar in boyish rivalry. One of his graver sports was to arrange his playmates in companies, and, placing himself at their head, march and countermarch them or lead them to the charge in mimic battle. Bold and athletic, he soon acquired influence over his companions

by his physical strength, while, by his probity and love of justice, he caused himself to be referred to as arbiter in all their quarrels. His hand dealt swift punishment on acts of meanness and oppression, for he would no more suffer wrong than do it. In school he was as much marked by his application and acquirements, as he was out of doors by his strength and agility. His taste in books was uncommonly grave, and he reveals at this early age the systematic subjection to wholesome rules under which he ever after placed all his conduct. He formed little manuscript books, into which he copied the forms used by men in transacting business, such as bonds, bills of exchange, notes of hand, receipts, etc. Selections of poetry are scattered along, evidently not such as a boy would naturally prefer. They were simply religious maxims, and doubtless had been hoarded from his mother's teachings.

He made also a large collection of rules of behavior, which reveal a remarkably matured mind in one so young. Many of them would not be comprehended by a boy of thirteen, much less have arrested his attention and be set aside as guides to himself: such as "Gaze not on the marks and blemishes of others, and ask not how they came." "What you may speak in secret to your friend, deliver not before others." "Let your recreations be manful, not sinful." "When you speak of God, or his attributes, let it be seriously and in reverence." and obey your natural parents, although they be poor." "Labor to keep alive in your heart that little spark of celestial fire called conscience."

"Honor

It is certainly extraordinary to see a mere child thus reduce his life, as it were, to system, and shape all his conduct to rules of morality. The foundation of a well-balanced and virtuous character, thus early established, could not but result in a noble and complete structure. In his case the tree obeyed the inclination of the twig to