"And odd moments have done much for some boys," added his teacher. "Fragments of time well improved have made some men illustrious."
"It will take larger fragments of time than I have to make me illustrious," suggested George, dryly.
"Perhaps not; you are not authorized to come to such a conclusion. There are too many facts known to warrant it. Your industry and resolution are equal to it."
George accepted the compliment in silence with his usual modesty, considerably encouraged by his teacher's words to persevere in doing things well.
This copy-book, containing sketches of his companions and pen-pictures of birds and beasts, has been carefully preserved with others. It is a valuable relic, too, as showing that George was not always the sedate, serious boy he has generally been represented to be; for some of these sketches border upon the comical, and evidently were intended to bring a smile over the faces of his school-mates. Mixed with his usually grave and practical way of doing things, they show more of the cheerful, roguish boy than is accorded to George by writers in general.
Another copy-book contains many extracts, in prose and poetry, which particularly interested George at the time. He was in the habit of preserving in this way choice bits of prose and poetry for future use. They were copied in his clear, fair handwriting, with every i dotted and every t crossed, and every comma and period nicely made and placed.
All these copy books, with other proofs of George's thorough scholarship and progress, can now be seen at Mount Vernon, where he lived and died.
Irving says of these: "His manuscript school-books still exist, and are models of neatness and accuracy. One of them, it is true, a ciphering book, preserved in the library at Mount Vernon, has some school-boy attempts at calligraphy; nondescript birds, executed with the flourish of a pen, or profiles of faces, probably intended for those of his school-mates; the rest are all grave and business-like. Before he was thirteen years of age he had copied into a volume forms for all kinds of mercantile and legal papers, bills of exchange, notes of hand, deeds, bonds and the like. This early self-tuition gave him throughout life a lawyer's skill in drafting documents, and a merchant's exactness in keeping accounts; so that all the concerns of his various estates, his dealings with his domestic stewards and foreign agents, his accounts with governments, and all the financial transactions, are to this day to be seen posted up in books, in his own handwriting, monuments of his method and unvaried accuracy."
There was yet another manuscript more important, really, than those of which we have spoken. It contained one hundred and ten rules for regulating his conduct, to which he gave the title, "Rules of Behavior in Company and Conversation."
When Lawrence Washington examined this manuscript he remarked to his wife, "It is remarkable that a boy of his years should make such a collection of rules as this. They are creditable to a much older head than his."