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His education was plain and practical. He never attempted the learned languages, nor manifested any inclination for rhetoric or belles-lettres. His object in life was to gain what was practical and useful, and he had no time for accomplishments, though his diction, rhetoric and grammar were not bad. While struggling to free a nation, he was called by the gentry and nobility plain Mr. Washington. Now that he has established a fame greater than any man past or present, these same gentry have worn out the records and stretched credulity to prove that he was of noble descent. George Washington needed no noble ancestry to make him famous. Like Cincinnatus, he sprang from the common people and was proud of his birth.

Of his early life, Washington Irving says:

"His manuscript books still exist, and are models of neatness and accuracy. Before he was thirteen years of age, he had copied into a volume forms of 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. was a self-disciplinarian in physical as well as mental matters, and practised himself in all kinds of athletic exercises, such as running, leaping, wres

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tling, pitching quoits and tossing bars. His frame, even in infancy, had been large and powerful, and he now excelled most of his playmates in contests of agility and strength. Above all, his inherent probity and the principles of justice on which he regulated all his conduct, even at this early period of life, were soon appreciated by his school-mates. He was referred to as an umpire in their disputes, and his decisions were never reversed."

Who will dare say that the child did not foreshadow the man? As in his school-boy days he mustered his schoolmates as soldiers, so in mature years he led his countrymen to battle and victory. As in school-boy days he was the adjudicator of disputes and legislator of the affairs of his classmates, so the matured man showed forth as the organizer of a mighty republic with himself at the head.

George Washington and his brother Lawrence had always entertained a warm feeling for each other. Capt. Lawrence Washington was a member of the house of burgesses and adjutant-general of the district. He was very popular in Virginia. George was a frequent visitor at Mount Vernon and came to love the dear old place as every American loves it still. Being a frequent sojourner with his brother, he was brought into familiar intercourse with the family of his father-in-law, the Honorable

William Fairfax, who resided at a beautiful country seat called Belvoir, a few miles below Mount Vernon and on the same woody ridge. Mr. Fairfax was a man of liberal education, who had had some military training, and no doubt he contributed much to the early military inspirations of young Washington.

George, like all boys, was delighted with stories of adventure, and the thrilling narratives of Mr. Fairfax and his brother Lawrence of their battles with Indians, Spaniards and pirates filled his soul with ambition to be a soldier.

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CHAPTER XI.

THE BEARDLESS HERO.

Our bugles sang truce, for the night-cloud had lowered,
And the sentinels set their watch in the sky;
And thousands had sunk to the ground overpowered,
The weary to sleep, and the wounded to die.

-CAMPBELL.

As soon as the campaign to the forest was over, Noah Stevens returned to Williamsburg and spent the year in the school denominated William and Mary's college. It was quite different from the famous seat of learning of to-day; but Noah made considerable progress in his studies. He sought the society of Miss Saturfield, who for a few months was the brilliant star of society at Williamsburg and then suddenly disappeared. Whither she had gone was not exactly known. One rumor said she was in some of the New England colonies, another that she had returned to the south. Mr. George Saturfield, her father, it was reported, had urgent business in England, and it was afterward ascertained that he had gone to England with all his family.

After spending two or three years in trying to learn the whereabouts of the brilliant star which had shone with such splendor for a brief space on his life, Noah Stevens gave her up, and, though in dreams he saw that face again, he sighed in his waking hours and said:

"It is not to be."

He began to take a lively interest in the affairs of his country. His country needed strong arms and brave hearts, for a crisis was at hand. The disputes between the French and English in America, ripened into action.

The planting of the town of Halifax in Nova Scotia offended the French, and a partisan named La Carne, professing to act under orders of Joncaire, who was chief captain in Canada, took possession of the isthmus that connects the peninsula with the mainland, and held it with a large force of French and Indians. It was he who summoned the unfortunate Acadians to renounce their allegiance to the English and take refuge with the French. He seized and held a village (now Fort St. Lawrence) and compelled all the inhabitants to take the oath of allegiance to France.

When Cornwallis heard of this, he called upon Massachusetts to help him in dislodging the intruders. The assembly replied:

แ By the constitution of this province, we must

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