Washington’s Rules of Conduct (Riverside Literature Series)

From inside the book: THE copy-books and exercise-books of most boys are early destroyed, but it chances that those of George Washington have been kept, and they are very interesting. The handwriting in them is the first thing to be noticed, — round, fair, and bold, the letters large like the hand that formed them, and the lines running straight and even. In the arithmetic and book-keeping manuals which we study at school, there are printed forms of receipts, bills, and other ordinary business papers ; but in Washington's school-days, the teacher showed the boys how to draw these up, and gave them also copies of longer papers, like leases, deeds, and wills. There were few lawyers in Virginia, and every gentleman was supposed to know many forms of documents which now are left to our lawyers or stationers. Washington's exercise-books have many pages of these forms, written out carefully by the boy. Sometimes he made ornamental letters such as clerks were wont to use. This was not merely exercise in penmanship; it was practice work in all that careful keeping of accounts and those business methods which were sure to be needed by one who had to manage a large plantation. George Washington was to manage something greater, though no one then knew it; and the habits which he formed at this time were of inestimable value to him in his manhood. The manuscript book which contains these exercises has also a list of a hundred and ten Rules of Civility and Decent Behavior in Company and Conversation. They were probably not made up by the boy, but copied from some book, or taken down from the lips of his mother or teacher. Fifty-seven of them are printed by Mr. Sparks in his Writings of Washington. They sound rather stiff to us, but it was a common thing in those days to set such rules before children, and George Washington, with his liking for regular, orderly ways — evident in his very writing — probably used the rules and perhaps committed them to memory, to secure an even temper and self-control. They touch on things great and small. The difficulty with most boys would be to follow a hundred and tea of such rules. They serve, however, to show what was the standard of good manners and morals among those who had the training of George Washington. The best of rules would have done little with poor stuff ; it was because this boy had a manly and honorable spirit that he could be trained in manly and honorable ways.