CHAPTER II.

WASHINGTON AS A BOY- HIS YOUNG MANHOOD-AN
OFFICER AT NINETEEN-MANY HARDSHIPS IN A
PERILOUS MISSION-MARRIAGE TO
MRS. CUSTIS.

G

EORGE WASHINGTON was the son of Augustine and Mary
Washington. Augustine was the son of John Washington, who,

with his brother, Lawrence, was the first of the Washington family to settle in Virginia, some two hundred years before the opening of the Twentieth Century.

John and Lawrence Washington were gentlemen. They were of good family. Lawrence had been graduated from that fine old English University of Oxford. John was more of a business man than a scholar.

Lawrence and John Washington purchased a large tract of land, on the western bank-about fifty miles above the mouth-of the Potomac River where John built a house. He then married Anne Pope.

Augustine, his second son, the father of George Washington, inherited the paternal homestead.

Augustine Washington's first wife, Jane Butler, was lovely in character, and beautiful in person, but she died, leaving three little motherless children.

The sorrowing father, in the course of years, found another mother for his bereaved household, and he was most fortunate in his choice.

Mary Ball was everything a husband could desire. Beautiful in person, intelligent, accomplished, energetic, prudent, and a warm-hearted Christian, she was worthy in every way to bear such a son as he who was the savior and first President of the United States.

Augustine and Mary were married on the 6th of March, 1730, and on the 22d of February, 1732, was born their first child. Little did they dream that little George-the name they bestowed upon him—was to become one of the most memorable characters in the annals of time.

Little George was sturdy, and at an early age developed a noble character.

He had a vigorous constitution, was of fine form, and possessed great bodily strength. In childhood he was noted for frankness, fearlessness and He never tyrannized over others; and none was found

moral courage.

brave enough to tyrannize over him.

"MARY, THE MOTHER OF WASHINGTON."

George was but ten years of age when his father died, leaving George and five other children.

The mother, however, was equal to the task thus imposed upon her. The confidence of her husband in her judgment and maternal love was indicated when he left the income of the entire property to her until her children should, respectively, come of age.

Nobly she discharged the task. A nation has paid homage to the memory of the mother of Washington.

Hers was a character simple, sincere and grave, cheered with earnest and unostentatious piety.

She was a masterful woman, of a temperament not admitting of contradiction.

Her well-balanced mind gave her great influence over her son, which she retained until the hour of her death.

George was just sixteen years old when he left school. He excelled in mathematics, was familiar with the principles of geometry and trigonometry, and of practical surveying. It was his intention to become a civil engineer. At that time there was great demand for such services, and the employment was lucrative.

Everything he did, he did well. When he wrote a letter, every word was plain as print. His diagrams and tables were never scribbled off, but executed with great skill and beauty.

After leaving school, George went to spend a little time with his elder brother, Lawrence, at Mount Vernon. Then, as now, it was a beautiful and enchanting spot.

Lord Fairfax, a man of large fortune and romantic tastes, lured by the charms of that region, had purchased a vast territory, not far from Mount Vernon, which extended far over the Blue Mountains.

It was a property embracing rivers and mountains, forests and prairies, and wealth not entirely explored even at the time of his death.

Fairfax was charmed with young Washington, his frankness, his intelligence, his manliness, his gentlemanly bearing-a boy in years but a man

in maturity of wisdom and character-and engaged this sixteen-year-old youth to explore and survey those pathless wilds, a large portion of which was then ranged only by wild beasts and savage men.

No lad of his age ever before undertook a task so arduous. George was fearless, and, with only a few attendants, he entered the wilderness. The journal he kept gives a good idea of the life he led. March 15, 1748, he wrote:

"Worked hard till night, and then returned. After supper, we were lighted into a room.

"I, not being so good a woodman as the rest, stripped myself very orderly, and went into the bed, as they call it; when, to my surprise, I found it to be nothing but a little straw matted together, without sheet or anything else but only one threadbare blanket, with double its weight of vermin.

"I was glad to get up and put on my clothes, and lie as my companions did. Had we not been very tired, I am sure we should not have slept. much that night.

"I made a promise to sleep so no more in a bed, choosing rather to sleep in the open air before a fire."

April 2d, he put this in the journal:

"A blowing, rainy night. Our straw, upon which we were lying, took fire, but I was luckily preserved by one of our men awakening when it was in a flame. We have run off four lots this day."

George returned from this tramp with all his energies consolidated by toil, peril and hardship. Though then but seventeen years of age, he was a responsible, self-reliant man.

The State of Virginia employed him as public surveyor, and two years afterwards he became a soldier.

WASHINGTON'S EARLY LOVE AFFAIRS.

George lived in the Fairfax family. He no longer seemed a boy, nor was he treated as such.

Tall, athletic and manly for his years, his early self-training, and the code of conduct he had devised, gave a gravity and decision to his conduct. His frankness and modesty inspired cordial regard, but melancholy had claimed him for her own.

This produced a softness in his manner calculated to win favor in ladies' eyes.