HIS EDUCATION.

sure of an education, His own strong judg

Such a boy as George Washington is whether the schools provide for it or not. ment will lead him to educate himself. Life around him will give him lessons. He will force circumstances to become his teachers. He will demand knowledge of the men and things about him, and they will grant the demand. His ancestry and his life make it certain that he was born to greatness. He was the child of a favoring Providence. The conditions of eminent usefulness were all fulfilled in the circumstances of his birth and life. While humanly speaking he was a self-made man, truly speaking he was divinely made. The history into which he is set as the most lustrous gem, bears to the man of faith undoubting marks of a divine procedure, of a purpose to lift the world to a higher life through America, and Washington appears as the chosen and prepared man to lead in the sublime enterprise. To one who has studied the whole matter profoundly, this seems clear. And this thought is the fitting one to preface a consideration of his education.

In those days the children of the Virginia planters were educated as they could be. The estates were large, and neighbors far apart. The schools were not plenty, nor of a high order. One Mr. Hobby, a tenant of George's father and sexton of the church which the family attended, kept a school in a humble building called "The old Field school-house;" here George got the rudiments of reading, writing and ciphering. Nothing but the beginnings of an education was attempted. But the helps which the boy got at school were so meagre that his parents joined their help with the teachers as much as they could. After his father's death he was sent to his brother Augustine, at Bridge's creek, where a more advanced and systematic school was taught by a Mr. Williams. His education here, where he remained the most of the time for four years, was of the plain and solid kind. His object seems to have been to fit himself for the practical business of a Virginia planter. He was fond of mathematics, and became quite proficient, not only in arith

metic, but in geometry and surveying. He practiced the art of surveying in the fields about the school, and made extensive and accurate drawings of them which are preserved. It is not known that he studied grammar or rhetoric, or any lingual or philosophical studies. His early attempts at composition, preserved at Mount Vernon, by their grammatical mistakes and inaccuracies indicate that all philological studies were neglected. He aimed at the practical. He has left a volume into which he had copied forms for most all kinds of business transactions, such as notes, bills of sale and exchange, bonds, deeds, wills, legal transactions of all kinds common in the colony. He had dealings with domestics, tenants, magistrates and every matter of business likely to occur in his life, set in form, and neatly and accurately written out. His manuscript school-books are preserved models of painstaking neatness and precision. His field-books of surveying show proficiency in drafting, and that he studied order and accuracy as he would study a science. Even in these early days Mr. Irving, his most elaborate and accomplished biographer says: "He had acquired the magic of method, which of itself works wonders."

When about fourteen, a plan was concocted by Lawrence and Mr. Fairfax to get him a place in the navy. A midshipman's warrant was obtained, his mother's consent gained and his luggage taken aboard the vessel he was to go on; when his mother relented and he was retained at school a while longer.

It is recorded of his mother that at stated times she was accustomed to gather her family about her and read to them from her favorite book, "Sir Matthew Hale's Contemplations, Moral and Divine." And we may well suppose that her readings were selected with reference to the moral lessons they imparted, and were emphasized with a mother's wisdom and affection. The effect of this maternal instruction on such a thoughtful youth as George, must have been great. His biographers have taken great pains to trace his ancestry and to recount the surrounding influences that helped educate and make George Washington, and have spoken respectfully of his mother's part; yet it seems clear to the author of this sketch,

that the mother's part in his education was the major part. She was a beautiful and good woman; he was her oldest child; she was yet young when left alone to care for the family and great estates. Many must have been the consultations which she and her son had over their affairs. The management of their property, domestics and their families; the care and education of the children, their discipline, health, manners and morals, all came often before the young mother and her thoughtful and considerate son. This education with and by his mother was more to him in making him the wise, great and good man he was, than all he got from schools and books.

Every

This is one of those marked instances of what a good mother can do for her children when left to her sole care. country and age abounds with such cases.

HIS YOUTH.

Lawrence Washington, living on his estate, which he called Mount Vernon, in close proximity to his father-in-law, William Fairfax, invited George to his home on leaving his school. George had now become a youth. Though only sixteen, he was tall, sedate, courteous in manners, more a man than a boy.

William Fairfax was a brother of Lord Fairfax, and had come to Virginia to look after the immense estates of his brother. Lord Fairfax had received grants of the land between the Rappahannock and Potomac rivers, and tiring of society at home on account of social disappointment, he came to Virginia and established his brother on his estate. Their elegant English home, near Mount Vernon, now became the frequent resort of George Washington. His frankness and modesty, and thoughtful, manly bearing won the cordial regard of all the family. The eldest son had just married and brought his wife and her sister home, adding much to the interest and sociality of the family. This educated circle of fine-bred people, old and young, and all older than he, did much to refine his manners and give him the appearance of being older than he was.

Lord Fairfax was a great rider and fox hunter, and kept horses and hounds for this old English sport. He found his

match in young Washington, and in their frequent rides on the chase learned the young man's worth and attainments; and engaged him to survey his grant of lands. This exactly suited young Washington, as he had educated himself for it, loved the wild woods of the mountain and valley, and had in his heart an unspoken reason for craving just such an adventurous excursion away from society into the wilds of the forest.

HIS HEART SORROW.

We have not been accustomed to think of George Washington as a lovesick swain, or ever having had those sorrowful experiences of the heart which unrequited love produces and which always bring bitter disappointment and often disasters. But it seems clear that when he went from school to Mount Vernon, he carried a poor aching heart smitten with an affection not reciprocated, or which, for some reason, he did not announce to its object. Who the young miss was who so filled his great heart with tenderness and pain is not known. He speaks of her in a letter to his "Dear Friend Robin," as "your Lowland Beauty." To different friends he wrote of his love sorrows. In his journal he wrote of it, and like other love-afflicted mortals, attempted to soothe his sorrows with poetic effusions. In these he speaks of his "poor, restless heart, wounded by cupid's dart, bleeding for one who remains pitiless of his griefs and woes." Some of his verses indicate that he never spoke his love to the ears that should have heard it, prevented, it may have been, by bashfulness:

"Ah, woe is me, that I should love and conceal;
Long have I wished and never dare reveal."

This experience, perhaps, should be set down as a part of his youthful education. It was not a loss. It softened his nature and manners. It revealed to himself the depth of his heart capacity. It awakened in him that deep respect for woman which he always felt, and might have been the secret of his studied courtesy of manner and gentleness of spirit toward all women. It is more than likely it was the experience of the

tender passion that led him to write in his journal, "Rules for behavior in company and conversation." One of his lady friends in his youth, late in her life said of him: "He was a very bashful young man; I often wished that he would talk more." He also compiled in his journal a code of " morals and manners," that he might be guided by them in his conduct and intercourse in society. He was self-directing and self-educating, and so methodical that he set down in his journal his plans for selfimprovement. His bashfulness, doubtless, made him feel that he must have rules of conduct, and enforce them upon himself. At this time he had had much experience of life; he had lost his father; had aided his mother in their extensive domestic and business affairs; had studied most of the time for four years; had listened much to his mother's reading and instruction; had associated intimately with his educated brother Lawrence, who was both father and brother to him and deeply loved him; had had his heart smitten with a great love; had had much intercourse with the eccentric, but strong Lord Fairfax, and with William Fairfax and his intelligent and refined family and visitors; had put in his journal his reflections and plans for selfimprovement, and yet was but just entering his seventeenth year. It is clear, that, though not educated in any college of letters and science, he was educated and profoundly educated, for one of his age, in the school of life. A grand and broad foundation had been laid for the great manhood that was afterward built thereon.

HIS SURVEYING EXPEDITION.

In the month of March, 1748, Washington, with George William Fairfax, son of William, with whom he had spent a happy winter, started on a surveying expedition to locate the boundaries of Lord Fairfax's grant of Virginia land. It was a rough, hard experience with rivers, forests, mountains, rain, Indians, squatters and mud; but it was satisfactorily completed by the twelfth of April. It gave Washington a clear knowledge of the Shenandoah valley and the mountains, rivers and lands about it, which was of great value to him in after years. Lord