Norwich bulletin., 1920-03-16
Five Minutes a Day
 With Our Presidents
Copyright t92o-By James Morgan

i-WASHiNGToN = THE MAN IN
 THE MAKING. 1732-(Feb. 22) Born near Fred
 rieksbure, Va 1743-Death of Father. 174s-Besan Surveying in the
 West.
 A little school girl shouted with delight as she came running home: ''Mother, the teacher told us about a man today, and he had a little hatchet, and his name was George" Later in the year. she burst in again. full of a further discovery: "Mother teacher toiu is d jouu another man today, and he had an axe, and ne was called AOei'
 Character, patriotismt he great un- heard-of past had been introduced to that child. as to generations of .Ameri- can children. in simple pictures that flashed upon her lnI.ld like motion films thrown upon a screen. The use ful. instructive myth of Washington's S little hatchet is scorned by many writers that he was born with a gold spoon in his mouth.
 Washington was made of the same clay as most Americans who have won nigh leadership and like them, he cut his teeth on the crust of poverty. Only four or five of our presidents came from poorer homes than our first president and he had less schooling than four -fifths of his suc- | cessors. He was, in fact, the only 1 president in the first forty years who was without a college education. Not starting to school until eight, he had to leave at fourteen to go to work. Thenceforth until the Revolu- ! tioh the woods and fields were his only schoolroom and life his only schoolmaster. A bad speller and a worse grammarian his English rap | idly improved in contact with the ed ucated men whom he. commanded by the superiority of his character. His generals cd his statesmen became his teachers.
 We neI.- can truly understand thi: man if we start with the mistaker idea that he was the product O wealth and aristocracy. His people really were only a plain, though al ways highly respectable family, liv ing on the outskirts of the cavalie castes which set up its manors in tn
 James River region.
 The greatest of Virginians made m
 ancestral boast, his great grand
 father having come out from Eng
 land in the modest capacity of mat
 on a trading vessel. Mt. Vernol came into the family as part of tn | land granted to a Washington in re ward for his services in transportin
 from English jails and alTnshouse one hundred indentured servants y Georges own father, who at one tim . had been sailing captain in the trad
 with, the mother country. left his wifi ' and children at his death five thous I and acres of land, more or less un
 productive; twentytwo slaves, a slen
 der purse and a lean larder.
 As only younger son and the chil of a second wife. George received bt i small share of a modest estate. Be ing dependent on the bounty of h n half brothers, he passed to. and fl y between them as a poor relation an e gre wup mostly in their homes. . While at Mt. Vernon, which his olt s est brother, Lawrence. had inherite he learned the simple rudiments q surveying and Lord Fairfax, who live nearby, employed him to survey z vast estate in the Valley of Virgini
 With that commission in hand, ti - sixteen year old boy rode away ov z the Blue Ridge and out in the wi