The Project Gutenberg EBook of George Washington's Rules of Civility
by Moncure D. Conway

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Title: George Washington's Rules of Civility
Traced to their Sources and Restored by Moncure D. Conway

Author: Moncure D. Conway

Release Date: April 15, 2004 [EBook #12029]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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GEORGE WASHINGTON'S
RULES OF CIVILITY

Traced to their Sources and Restored

BY
MONCURE D. CONWAY

1890

Inscribed

TO MY SON
_EUSTACE CONWAY_

THE RULES OF CIVILITY.

Among the manuscript books of George Washington, preserved in the State
Archives at Washington City, the earliest bears the date, written in it
by himself, 1745. Washington was born February 11, 1731 O.S., so that
while writing in this book he was either near the close of his
fourteenth, or in his fifteenth, year. It is entitled "Forms of
Writing," has thirty folio pages, and the contents, all in his boyish
handwriting, are sufficiently curious. Amid copied forms of exchange,
bonds, receipts, sales, and similar exercises, occasionally, in ornate
penmanship, there are poetic selections, among them lines of a religious
tone on "True Happiness." But the great interest of the book centres in
the pages headed: "Rules of Civility and Decent Behaviour in Company
and Conversation." The book had been gnawed at the bottom by Mount
Vernon mice, before it reached the State Archives, and nine of the 110
Rules have thus suffered, the sense of several being lost.

The Rules possess so much historic interest that it seems surprising
that none of Washington's biographers or editors should have given them
to the world. Washington Irving, in his "Life of Washington," excites
interest in them by a tribute, but does not quote even one. Sparks
quotes 57, but inexactly, and with his usual literary manipulation;
these were reprinted (1886, 16 deg.) by W.O. Stoddard, at Denver, Colorado;
and in Hale's "Washington" (1888). I suspect that the old biographers,
more eulogistic than critical, feared it would be an ill servi