THE WASHINGTONS
Such was the world and such the community which counted as a small
fraction the Washington family. Our immediate concern is with that
family, for before we approach the man we must know his ancestors. The
greatest leader of scientific thought in this century has come to
the aid of the genealogist, and given to the results of the latter's
somewhat discredited labors a vitality and meaning which it seemed
impossible that dry and dusty pedigrees and barren tables of descent
should ever possess. We have always selected our race-horses according
to the doctrines of evolution, and we now study the character of a
great man by examining first the history of his forefathers.
Washington made so great an impression upon the world in his lifetime
that genealogists at once undertook for him the construction of a
suitable pedigree. The excellent Sir Isaac Heard, garter king-at-arms,
worked out a genealogy which seemed reasonable enough, and then wrote
to the president in relation to it. Washington in reply thanked him
for his politeness, sent him the Virginian genealogy of his own
branch, and after expressing a courteous interest said, in his simple
and direct fashion, that he had been a busy man and had paid but
little attention to the subject. His knowledge about his English
forefathers was in fact extremely slight. He had heard merely that
the first of the name in Virginia had come from one of the northern
counties of England, but whether from Lancashire or Yorkshire, or one
still more northerly, he could not tell. Sir Isaac was not thoroughly
satisfied with the correctness of his own work, but presently Baker
took it up in his history of Northamptonshire, and perfected it to
his own satisfaction and that of the world in general. This genealogy
derived Washington's descent from the owners of the manor of Sulgrave,
in Northamptonshire, and thence carried it back to the Norman knight,
Sir William de Hertburn. According to this pedigree the Virginian
settlers, John and Lawrence, were the sons of Lawrence Washington of
Sulgrave Manor, and this genealogy was adopted by Sparks and Irving,
as well as by the public at large. Twenty years ago, however, Colonel
Chester, by his researches, broke the most essential link in the chain
forged by Heard and Baker, proving clearly that the Virginian settlers
could not have been the sons of Lawrence of Sulgrave, as identified by
the garter king-at-arms. Still more recently the mythical spirit has
taken violent possession of the Washington ancestry, and an ingenious
gentleman has traced the pedigree of our first president back to
Thorfinn and thence to Odin, which is sufficiently remote, dignified,
and lofty to satisfy the most exacting Welshman that ever lived. Still
the breach made by Colonel Chester was not repaired, although many
writers, including some who should have known better, clung with
undiminished faith to the Heard pedigree. It was known that Colonel
Chester himself believed that he had found the true line, coming, it
is supposed, through a younger branch of the Sulgrave race, but he
died before he had discovered the one bit of evidence necessary to
prove an essential step, and he was too conscientiously accurate to
leave anything to conjecture. Since then the researches of Mr. Henry
E. Waters have established the pedigree of the Virginian Washingtons,
and we are now able to know something of the men from whom George
Washington drew his descent.
In that interesting land where everything, according to our narrow
ideas, is upside down, it is customary, when an individual arrives at
distinction, to confer nobility upon his ancestors instead of upon
his children. The Washingtons offer an interesting example of the
application of this Chinese system in the Western world, for, if they
have not been actually ennobled in recognition of the deeds of their
great descendant, they have at least become the subjects of intense
and general interest. Every one of the name who could be discovered
anywhere has been dragged forth into the light, and has had all that
was known about him duly recorded and set down. By scanning family
trees and pedigrees, and picking up stray bits of information here and
there, we can learn in a rude and general fashion what manner of men
those were who claimed descent from William of Hertburn, and who bore
the name of Washington in the mother-country. As Mr. Galton passes
a hundred faces before the same highly sensitized plate, and gets a
photograph which is a likeness of no one of his subjects, and yet
resembles them all, so we may turn the camera of history upon these
Washingtons, as they flash up for a moment from the dim past, and hope
to obtain what Professor Huxley calls a "generic" picture of the race,
even if the outlines be somewhat blurred and indistinct.
In the North of England, in the region conquered first by Saxons and
then by Danes, lies the little village of Washington. It came into the
possession of Sir William de Hertburn, and belonged to him at the time
of the Boldon Book in 1183. Soon after, he or his descendants took
the name of De Wessyngton, and there they remained for two centuries,
knights of the palatinate, holding their lands by a military tenure,
fighting in all the wars, and taking part in tournaments with becoming
splendor. By the beginning of the fifteenth century the line of feudal
knights of the palatinate was extinct, and the manor passed from the
family by the marriage of Dionisia de Wessyngton. But the main stock
had in the mean time thrown out many offshoots, which had taken firm
root in other parts and in many counties of England. We hear of
several who came in various ways to eminence. There was the learned
and vigorous prior of Durham, John de Wessyngton, probably one of the
original family, and the name appears in various places after his time
in records and on monuments, indicating a flourishing and increasing
race. Lawrence Washington, the direct ancestor of the first President
of the United States, was, in the sixteenth century, the mayor of
Northampton, and received from King Henry VIII. the manor of Sulgrave
in 1538. In the next century we find traces of Robert Washington of
the Adwick family, a rich merchant of Leeds, and of his son Joseph
Washington, a learned lawyer and author, of Gray's Inn. About the same
time we hear of Richard Washington and Philip Washington holding high
places at University College, Oxford. The Sulgrave branch, however,
was the most numerous and prosperous. From the mayor of Northampton
were descended Sir William Washington, who married the half-sister of
George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham; Sir Henry Washington, who made a
desperate defense of Worcester against the forces of the Parliament in
1646; Lieutenant-Colonel James Washington, who fell at the siege of
Pontefract, fighting for King Charles; another James, of a later time,
who was implicated in Monmouth's rebellion, fled to Holland and became
the progenitor of a flourishing and successful family, which has
spread to Germany and there been ennobled; Sir Lawrence Washington, of
Garsdon, whose grand-daughter married Robert Shirley, Baron Ferrers;
and others of less note, but all men of property and standing. They
seem to have been a successful, thrifty race, owning lands and
estates, wise magistrates and good soldiers, marrying well, and
increasing their wealth and strength from generation to generation.
They were of Norman stock, knights and gentlemen in the full sense of
the word before the French Revolution, and we can detect in them here
and there a marked strain of the old Norse blood, carrying with it
across the centuries the wild Berserker spirit which for centuries
made the adventurous Northmen the terror of Europe. They were a strong
race evidently, these Washingtons, whom we see now only by glimpses
through the mists of time, not brilliant apparently, never winning the
very highest fortune, having their failures and reverses no doubt,
but on the whole prudent, bold men, always important in their several
stations, ready to fight and ready to work, and as a rule successful
in that which they set themselves to do.
In 1658 the two brothers, John and Lawrence, appeared in Virginia. As
has been proved by Mr. Waters, they were of the Sulgrave family,
the sons of Lawrence Washington, fifth son of the elder Lawrence of
Sulgrave and Brington. The father of the emigrants was a fellow of
Brasenose College, Oxford, and rector of Purleigh, from which living
he was ejected by the Puritans as both "scandalous" and "malignant."
That he was guilty of the former charge we may well doubt; but that he
was, in the language of the time, "malignant," must be admitted, for
all his family, including his brothers, Sir William Washington of
Packington, and Sir John Washington of Thrapston, his nephew, Sir
Henry Washington, and his nephew-in-law, William Legge, ancestor of
the Earl of Dartmouth, were strongly on the side of the king. In a
marriage which seems to have been regarded as beneath the dignity of
the family, and in the poverty consequent upon the ejectment from
his living, we can find the reason for the sons of the Rev. Lawrence
Washington going forth into Virginia to find their fortune, and flying
from the world of victorious Puritanism which offered just then so
little hope to royalists like themselves. Yet what was poverty in
England was something much more agreeable in the New World of America.
The emigrant brothers at all events seem to have had resources of a
sufficient kind, and to have been men of substance, for they purchased
lands and established themselves at Bridges Creek, in Westmoreland
County. With this brief statement, Lawrence disappears, leaving us
nothing further than the knowledge that he had numerous descendants.
John, with whom we are more concerned, figures at once in the colonial
records of Maryland. He made complaint to the Maryland authorities,
soon after his arrival, against Edward Prescott, merchant, and captain
of the ship in which he had come over, for hanging a woman during the
voyage for witchcraft. We have a letter of his, explaining that he
could not appear at the first trial because he was about to baptize
his son, and had bidden the neighbors and gossips to the feast. A
little incident this, dug out of the musty records, but it shows us an
active, generous man, intolerant of oppression, public-spirited and
hospitable, social, and friendly in his new relations. He soon after
was called to mourn the death of his English wife and of two children,
but he speedily consoled himself by taking a second wife, Anne Pope,
by whom he had three children, Lawrence, John, and Anne. According to
the Virginian tradition, John Washington the elder was a surveyor, and
made a location of lands which was set aside because they had been
assigned to the Indians. It is quite apparent that he was a forehanded
person who acquired property and impressed himself upon his neighbors.
In 1667, when he had been but ten years in the colony, he was chosen
to the House of Burgesses; and eight years later he was made a colonel
and sent with a thousand men to join the Marylanders in destroying
the "Susquehannocks," at the "Piscataway" fort, on account of some
murdering begun by another tribe. As a feat of arms, the expedition
was not a very brilliant affair. The Virginians and Marylanders killed
half a dozen Indian chiefs during a parley, and then invested the
fort. After repulsing several sorties, they stupidly allowed the
Indians to escape in the night and carry murder and pillage through
the outlying settlements, lighting up first the flames of savage war
and then the fiercer fire of domestic insurrection. In the next year
we hear again of John Washington in the House of Burgesses, when Sir
William Berkeley assailed his troops for the murder of the Indians
during the parley. Popular feeling, however, was clearly with the
colonel, for nothing was done and the matter dropped. At that point,
too, in 1676, John Washington disappears from sight, and we know only
that as his will was proved in 1677, he must have died soon after the
scene with Berkeley. He was buried in the family vault at Bridges
Creek, and left a good estate to be divided among his children. The
colonel was evidently both a prudent and popular man, and quite
disposed to bustle about in the world in which he found himself. He
acquired lands, came to the front at once as a leader although a
new-comer in the country, was evidently a fighting man as is shown by
his selection to command the Virginian forces, and was honored by his
neighbors, who gave his name to the parish in which he dwelt. Then
he died and his son Lawrence reigned in his stead, and became by his
wife, Mildred Warner, the father of John, Augustine, and Mildred
Washington.
This second son, Augustine, farmer and planter like his forefathers,
married first Jane Butler, by whom he had three sons and a daughter,
and second, Mary Ball, by whom he had four sons and two daughters. The
eldest child of these second nuptials was named George, and was born
on February 11 (O.S.), 1732, at Bridges Creek. The house in which
this event occurred was a plain, wooden farmhouse of the primitive
Virginian pattern, with four rooms on the ground floor, an attic story
with a long, sloping roof, and a massive brick chimney. Three years
after George Washington's birth it is said to have been burned, and
the family for this or some other reason removed to another estate in
what is now Stafford County. The second house was like the first, and
stood on rising ground looking across a meadow to the Rappahannock,
and beyond the river to the village of Fredericksburg, which was
nearly opposite. Here, in 1743, Augustine Washington died somewhat
suddenly, at the age of forty-nine, from an attack of gout brought on
by exposure in the rain, and was buried with his fathers in the old
vault at Bridges Creek. Here, too, the boyhood of Washington was
passed, and therefore it becomes necessary to look about us and see
what we can learn of this important period of his life.
We know nothing about his father, except that he was kindly and
affectionate, attached to his wife and children, and apparently
absorbed in the care of his estates. On his death the children came
wholly under the maternal influence and direction. Much has been
written about the "mother of Washington," but as a matter of fact,
although she lived to an advanced age, we know scarcely more about her
than we do about her husband. She was of gentle birth, and possessed
a vigorous character and a good deal of business capacity. The
advantages of education were given in but slight measure to the
Virginian ladies of her time, and Mrs. Washington offered no exception
to the general rule. Her reading was confined to a small number of
volumes, chiefly of a devotional character, her favorite apparently
being Hale's "Moral and Divine Contemplations." She evidently knew no
language but her own, and her spelling was extremely bad even in that
age of uncertain orthography. Certain qualities, however, are clear to
us even now through all the dimness. We can see that Mary Washington
was gifted with strong sense, and had the power of conducting business
matters providently and exactly. She was an imperious woman, of strong
will, ruling her kingdom alone. Above all she was very dignified, very
silent, and very sober-minded. That she was affectionate and loving
cannot be doubted, for she retained to the last a profound hold upon
the reverential devotion of her son, and yet as he rose steadily to
the pinnacle of human greatness, she could only say that "George
had been a good boy, and she was sure he would do his duty." Not a
brilliant woman evidently, not one suited to shine in courts, conduct
intrigues, or adorn literature, yet able to transmit moral qualities
to her oldest son, which, mingled with those of the Washingtons, were
of infinite value in the foundation of a great Republic. She found
herself a widow at an early age, with a family of young children to
educate and support. Her means were narrow, for although Augustine
Washington was able to leave what was called a landed estate to each
son, it was little more than idle capital, and the income in ready
money was by no means so evident as the acres.
Many are the myths, and deplorably few the facts, that have come
down to us in regard to Washington's boyhood. For the former we are
indebted to the illustrious Weems, and to that personage a few more
words must be devoted. Weems has been held up to the present age
in various ways, usually, it must be confessed, of an unflattering
nature, and "mendacious" is the adjective most commonly applied to
him. There has been in reality a good deal of needless confusion about
Weems and his book, for he was not a complex character, and neither he
nor his writings are difficult to value or understand. By profession a
clergyman or preacher, by nature an adventurer, Weems loved notoriety,
money, and a wandering life. So he wrote books which he correctly
believed would be popular, and sold them not only through the regular
channels, but by peddling them himself as he traveled about the
country. In this way he gratified all his propensities, and no doubt
derived from life a good deal of simple pleasure. Chance brought him
near Washington in the closing days, and his commercial instinct
told him that here was the subject of all others for his pen and
his market. He accordingly produced the biography which had so much
success. Judged solely as literature, the book is beneath contempt.
The style is turgid, overloaded, and at times silly. The statements
are loose, the mode of narration confused and incoherent, and the
moralizing is flat and common-place to the last degree. Yet there
was a certain sincerity of feeling underneath all the bombast and
platitudes, and this saved the book. The biography did not go, and was
not intended to go, into the hands of the polite society of the great
eastern towns. It was meant for the farmers, the pioneers, and the
backwoodsmen of the country. It went into their homes, and passed with
them beyond the Alleghanies and out to the plains and valleys of the
great West. The very defects of the book helped it to success among
the simple, hard-working, hard-fighting race engaged in the conquest
of the American continent. To them its heavy and tawdry style, its
staring morals, and its real patriotism all seemed eminently befitting
the national hero, and thus Weems created the Washington of the
popular fancy. The idea grew up with the country, and became so
ingrained in the popular thought that finally everybody was affected
by it, and even the most stately and solemn of the Washington
biographers adopted the unsupported tales of the itinerant parson and
book-peddler.
In regard to the public life of Washington, Weems took the facts known
to every one, and drawn for the most part from the gazettes. He then
dressed them up in his own peculiar fashion and gave them to the
world. All this, forming of course nine tenths of his book, has
passed, despite its success, into oblivion. The remaining tenth
described Washington's boyhood until his fourteenth or fifteenth year,
and this, which is the work of the author's imagination, has lived.
Weems, having set himself up as absolutely the only authority as to
this period, has been implicitly followed, and has thus come to demand
serious consideration. Until Weems is weighed and disposed of, we
cannot even begin an attempt to get at the real Washington.
Weems was not a cold-blooded liar, a mere forger of anecdotes. He was
simply a man destitute of historical sense, training, or morals, ready
to take the slenderest fact and work it up for the purposes of the
market until it became almost as impossible to reduce it to its
original dimensions as it was for the fisherman to get the Afrit back
into his jar. In a word, Weems was an approved myth-maker. No better
example can be given than the way in which he described himself. It
is believed that he preached once, and possibly oftener, to a
congregation which numbered Washington among its members. Thereupon he
published himself in his book as the rector of Mount Vernon parish.
There was, to begin with, no such parish. There was Truro parish, in
which was a church called indifferently Pohick or Mount Vernon church.
Of this church Washington was a vestryman until 1785, when he joined
the church at Alexandria. The Rev. Lee Massey was the clergyman of the
Mount Vernon church, and the church at Alexandria had nothing to do
with Mount Vernon. There never was, moreover, such a person as the
rector of Mount Vernon parish, but it was the Weems way of treating
his appearance before the great man, and of deceiving the world with
the notion of an intimacy which the title implied.
Weems, of course, had no difficulty with the public life, but in
describing the boyhood he was thrown on his own resources, and out
of them he evolved the cherry-tree, the refusal to fight or permit
fighting among the boys at school, and the initials in the garden.
This last story is to the effect that Augustine Washington planted
seeds in such a manner that when they sprouted they formed on the
earth the initials of his son's name, and the boy being much delighted
thereby, the father explained to him that it was the work of the
Creator, and thus inculcated a profound belief in God. This tale
is taken bodily from Dr. Beattie's biographical sketch of his son,
published in England in 1799, and may be dismissed at once. As to the
other two more familiar anecdotes there is not a scintilla of evidence
that they had any foundation, and with them may be included the colt
story, told by Mr. Custis, a simple variation of the cherry-tree
theme, which is Washington's early love of truth. Weems says that
his stories were told him by a lady, and "a good old gentleman," who
remembered the incidents, while Mr. Custis gives no authority for his
minute account of a trivial event over a century old when he wrote.
To a writer who invented the rector of Mount Vernon, the further
invention of a couple of Boswells would be a trifle. I say Boswells
advisedly, for these stories are told with the utmost minuteness, and
the conversations between Washington and his father are given as if
from a stenographic report. How Mr. Custis, usually so accurate, came
to be so far infected with the Weems myth as to tell the colt story
after the Weems manner, cannot now be determined. There can be no
doubt that Washington, like most healthy boys, got into a good deal of
mischief, and it is not at all impossible that he injured fruit-trees
and confessed that he had done so. It may be accepted as certain that
he rode and mastered many unbroken thoroughbred colts, and it is
possible that one of them burst a blood-vessel in the process and
died, and that the boy promptly told his mother of the accident. But
this is the utmost credit which these two anecdotes can claim. Even so
much as this cannot be said of certain other improving tales of like
nature. That Washington lectured his playmates on the wickedness of
fighting, and in the year 1754 allowed himself to be knocked down in
the presence of his soldiers, and thereupon begged his assailant's
pardon for having spoken roughly to him, are stories so silly and
so foolishly impossible that they do not deserve an instant's
consideration.
There is nothing intrinsically impossible in either the cherry-tree or
the colt incident, nor would there be in a hundred others which might
be readily invented. The real point is that these stories, as told by
Weems and Mr. Custis, are on their face hopelessly and ridiculously
false. They are so, not merely because they have no vestige of
evidence to support them, but because they are in every word and
line the offspring of a period more than fifty years later. No
English-speaking people, certainly no Virginians, ever thought or
behaved or talked in 1740 like the personages in Weems's stories,
whatever they may have done in 1790, or at the beginning of the next
century. These precious anecdotes belong to the age of Miss Edgeworth
and Hannah More and Jane Taylor. They are engaging specimens of the
"Harry and Lucy" and "Purple Jar" morality, and accurately reflect the
pale didacticism which became fashionable in England at the close of
the last century. They are as untrue to nature and to fact at the
period to which they are assigned as would be efforts to depict
Augustine Washington and his wife in the dress of the French
revolution discussing the propriety of worshiping the Goddess of
Reason.
To enter into any serious historical criticism of these stories would
be to break a butterfly. So much as this even has been said only
because these wretched fables have gone throughout the world, and it
is time that they were swept away into the dust-heaps of history. They
represent Mr. and Mrs. Washington as affected and priggish people,
given to cheap moralizing, and, what is far worse, they have served
to place Washington himself in a ridiculous light to an age which has
outgrown the educational foibles of seventy-five years ago. Augustine
Washington and his wife were a gentleman and lady of the eighteenth
century, living in Virginia. So far as we know without guessing or
conjecture, they were simple, honest, and straight-forward, devoted to
the care of their family and estate, and doing their duty sensibly and
after the fashion of their time. Their son, to whom the greatest wrong
has been done, not only never did anything common or mean, but from
the beginning to the end of his life he was never for an instant
ridiculous or affected, and he was as utterly removed from canting
or priggishness as any human being could well be. Let us therefore
consign the Weems stories and their offspring to the limbo of
historical rubbish, and try to learn what the plain facts tell us of
the boy Washington.
Unfortunately these same facts are at first very few, so few that they
tell us hardly anything. We know when and where Washington was born;
and how, when he was little more than three years old,[1] he was taken
from Bridges Creek to the banks of the Rappahannock. There he was
placed under the charge of one Hobby, the sexton of the parish, to
learn his alphabet and his pothooks; and when that worthy man's store
of learning was exhausted he was sent back to Bridges Creek, soon
after his father's death, to live with his half-brother Augustine,
and obtain the benefits of a school kept by a Mr. Williams. There he
received what would now be called a fair common-school education,
wholly destitute of any instruction in languages, ancient or modern,
but apparently with some mathematical training.
[Footnote 1: There is a conflict about the period of this removal (see
above, p. 37). Tradition places it in 1735, but the Rev. Mr. McGuire
(_Religious Opinions of Washington_) puts it in 1739.]
That he studied faithfully cannot be doubted, and we know, too, that
he matured early, and was a tall, active, and muscular boy. He could
outwalk and outrun and outride any of his companions. As he could
no doubt have thrashed any of them too, he was, in virtue of these
qualities, which are respected everywhere by all wholesome minds, and
especially by boys, a leader among his school-fellows. We know further
that he was honest and true, and a lad of unusual promise, not because
of the goody-goody anecdotes of the myth-makers, but because he
was liked and trusted by such men as his brother Lawrence and Lord
Fairfax.
There he was, at all events, in his fourteenth year, a big, strong,
hearty boy, offering a serious problem to his mother, who was
struggling along with many acres, little money, and five children.
Mrs. Washington's chief desire naturally was to put George in the way
of earning a living, which no doubt seemed far more important than
getting an education, and, as he was a sober-minded boy, the same idea
was probably profoundly impressed on his own mind also. This condition
of domestic affairs led to the first attempt to give Washington a
start in life, which has been given to us until very lately in a
somewhat decorated form. The fact is, that in casting about for
something to do, it occurred to some one, very likely to the boy
himself, that it would be a fine idea to go to sea. His masculine
friends and relatives urged the scheme upon Mrs. Washington, who
consented very reluctantly, if at all, not liking the notion of
parting with her oldest son, even in her anxiety to have him earn his
bread. When it came to the point, however, she finally decided against
his going, determined probably by a very sensible letter from her
brother, Joseph Ball, an English lawyer. In all the ornamented
versions we are informed that the boy was to enter the royal navy,
and that a midshipman's warrant was procured for him. There does not
appear to be any valid authority for the royal navy, the warrant, or
the midshipman. The contemporary Virginian letters speak simply of
"going to sea," while Mr. Ball says distinctly that the plan was to
enter the boy on a tobacco-ship, with an excellent chance of being
pressed on a man-of-war, and a very faint prospect of either getting
into the navy, or even rising to be the captain of one of the petty
trading-vessels familiar to Virginian planters. Some recent writers
have put Mr. Ball aside as not knowing what was intended in regard to
his nephew, but in view of the difficulty at that time of obtaining
commissions in the navy without great political influence, it seems
probable that Mrs. Washington's brother knew very well what he was
talking about, and he certainly wrote a very sensible letter. A bold,
adventurous boy, eager to earn his living and make his way in the
world, would, like many others before him, look longingly to the sea
as the highway to fortune and success. To Washington the romance of
the sea was represented by the tobacco-ship creeping up the river and
bringing all the luxuries and many of the necessaries of life from
vaguely distant countries. No doubt he wished to go on one of these
vessels and try his luck, and very possibly the royal navy was hoped
for as the ultimate result. The effort was certainly made to send
him to sea, but it failed, and he went back to school to study more
mathematics.
Apart from the fact that the exact sciences in moderate degree were
about all that Mr. Williams could teach, this branch of learning had
an immediate practical value, inasmuch as surveying was almost the
only immediately gainful pursuit open to a young Virginia gentleman,
who sorely needed a little ready money that he might buy slaves and
work a plantation. So Washington studied on for two years more, and
fitted himself to be a surveyor. There are still extant some early
papers belonging to this period, chiefly fragments of school
exercises, which show that he already wrote the bold, handsome
hand with which the world was to become familiar, and that he made
geometrical figures and notes of surveys with the neatness and
accuracy which clung to him in all the work of his life, whether great
or small. Among those papers, too, were found many copies of legal
forms, and a set of rules, over a hundred in number, as to etiquette
and behavior, carefully written out. It has always been supposed that
these rules were copied, but it was reserved apparently for the storms
of a mighty civil war to lay bare what may have been, if not the
source of the rules themselves, the origin and suggestion of their
compilation. At that time a little volume was found in Virginia
bearing the name of George Washington in a boyish hand on the
fly-leaf, and the date 1742. The book was entitled, "The Young Man's
Companion." It was an English work, and had passed through thirteen
editions, which was little enough in view of its varied and extensive
information. It was written by W. Mather, in a plain and easy style,
and treated of arithmetic, surveying, forms for legal documents, the
measuring of land and lumber, gardening, and many other useful topics,
and it contained general precepts which, with the aid of Hale's
"Contemplations," may readily have furnished the hints for the rules
found in manuscript among Washington's papers.[1] These rules were in
the main wise and sensible, and it is evident they had occupied deeply
the boy's mind.[2] They are for the most part concerned with the
commonplaces of etiquette and good manners, but there is something not
only apt but quite prophetic in the last one, "Labor to keep alive in
your breast that little spark of celestial fire called conscience." To
suppose that Washington's character was formed by these sententious
bits of not very profound wisdom would be absurd; but that a series of
rules which most lads would have regarded as simply dull should have
been written out and pondered by this boy indicates a soberness and
thoughtfulness of mind which certainly are not usual at that age.
The chief thought that runs through all the sayings is to practice
self-control, and no man ever displayed that most difficult of virtues
to such a degree as George Washington. It was no ordinary boy who took
such a lesson as this to heart before he was fifteen, and carried it
into his daily life, never to be forgotten. It may also be said that
very few boys ever needed it more; but those persons who know what
they chiefly need, and pursue it, are by no means common.
[Footnote 1: An account of this volume was given in the _New York
Tribune_ in 1866, and also in the _Historical Magazine_ (x. 47).]
[Footnote 2: The most important are given in Sparks' _Writings of
Washington_, ii. 412, and they may be found complete in the little
pamphlet concerning them, excellently edited by Dr. J.M. Toner, of
Washington.]