valueless.

Born at Wakefield, in Washington parish, Westmoreland, which had been the
home of the Washingtons from their earliest arrival in Virginia, George
was too young while the family continued there to attend the school which
had been founded in that parish by the gift of four hundred and forty
acres from some early patron of knowledge. When the boy was about three
years old, the family removed to "Washington," as Mount Vernon was called
before it was renamed, and dwelt there from 1735 till 1739, when, owing to
the burning of the homestead, another remove was made to an estate on the
Rappahannock, nearly opposite Fredericksburg.

Here it was that the earliest education of George was received, for in an
old volume of the Bishop of Exeter's Sermons his name is written, and on a
flyleaf a note in the handwriting of a relative who inherited the library
states that this "autograph of George Washington's name is believed to be
the earliest specimen of his handwriting, when he was probably not more
than eight or nine years old." During this period, too, there came into
his possession the "Young Man's Companion," an English _vade-mecum_ of
then enormous popularity, written "in a plain and easy stile," the title
states, "that a young Man may attain the same, without a Tutor." It would
be easier to say what this little book did not teach than to catalogue
what it did. How to read, write, and figure is but the introduction to the
larger part of the work, which taught one to write letters, wills, deeds,
and all legal forms, to measure, survey, and navigate, to build houses, to
make ink and cider, and to plant and graft, how to address letters to
people of quality, how to doctor the sick, and, finally, how to conduct
one's self in company. The evidence still exists of how carefully
Washington studied this book, in the form of copybooks, in which are
transcribed problem after problem and rule after rule, not to exclude the
famous Rules of civility, which biographers of Washington have asserted
were written by the boy himself. School-mates thought fit, after
Washington became famous, to remember his "industry and assiduity at
school as very remarkable," and the copies certainly bear out the
statement, but even these prove that the lad was as human as the man, for
scattered here and there among the logarithms, geometrical problems, and
legal forms are crude drawings of birds, faces, and other typical
school-boy attempts.

From