"But, oh, how different, George, is the case with the boy who is so given to lying that nobody can believe a word he says. He is looked at with aversion wherever he goes, and parents dread to see him come among their children. O George, rather than see you come to this pass, dear as you are to me, I would follow you to your grave."
Here George protested against being charged with lying. "Do I ever tell lies?" he asked.
"No, George, I thank God you do not; and I rejoice in the hope that you never will. At least, you shall never, from me, have cause to be guilty of so shameful a thing. You know I have always told you, and now tell you again, that, whenever by accident you do anything wrong, which must often be the case, as you are but a little boy, without experience or knowledge, never tell a falsehood to conceal it; but come bravely up, and tell me of it; and your confession will merit love instead of punishment."
As we proceed with this narrative, after having enjoyed this glimpse of George's earliest years, the charming lines of Burleigh will find a fitting application.
"By honest work and inward truth
The victories of our life are won,
And what is wisely done in youth
For all the years is wisely done;
The little deeds of every day
Shape that within which lives for aye.
"No thought so buried in the dark
It shall not bear its bloom in light;
No act too small to leave its mark
Upon the young hearts tablet white;
Our grand achievements, secret springs,
Are tempered among trivial things.
"No soul at last is truly great
That was not greatly true at first;
In childhood's play are seeds of fate
Whose flower in manhood's work shall burst.
In the clinched fist of baby Thor
Might seem his hammer clutched for war.
* * * * * * * *
"The firmest tower to heaven up-piled
Hides deepest its foundation-stone;
Do well the duty of the child,
And manhood's task is well begun;
In thunders of the forum yet
Resounds the mastered alphabet."
George was about eight years old when a great excitement arose among the colonists in Virginia, and the fife and drum were heard, to announce that England, the mother country, needed soldiers.