be acknowledged that, aside from these errors which he had been taught, through his whole life Washington was a non-conformist as regarded the King’s English:  struggle as he undoubtedly did, the instinct of correct spelling was absent, and thus every now and then a verbal slip appeared:  extravagence, lettely (for lately), glew, riffle (for rifle), latten (for Latin), immagine, winder, rief (for rife), oppertunity, spirma citi, yellow oaker,—­such are types of his lapses late in life, while his earlier letters and journals are far more inaccurate.  It must be borne in mind, however, that of these latter we have only the draughts, which were undoubtedly written carelessly, and the two letters actually sent which are now known, and the text of his surveys before he was twenty, are quite as well written as his later epistles.

[Illustration:  Easy Copies to Write by.  COPY OF PENMANSHIP BY WHICH WASHINGTON’S HANDWRITING WAS FORMED]

On the death of his father, Washington went to live with his brother Augustine, in order, it is presumed, that he might take advantage of a good school near Wakefield, kept by one Williams; but after a time he returned to his mother’s, and attended the school kept by the Rev. James Marye, in Fredericksburg.  It has been universally asserted by his biographers that he studied no foreign language, but direct proof to the contrary exists in a copy of Patrick’s Latin translation of Homer, printed in 1742, the fly-leaf of a copy of which bears, in a school-boy hand, the inscription: 

“Hunc mihi quaeso (bone Vir) Libellum
Redde, si forsan tenues repertum
Ut Scias qui sum sine fraude Scriptum.

Est mihi nomen,
Georgio Washington,
George Washington,
Fredericksburg,
Virginia.”

It is thus evident that the reverend teacher gave Washington at least the first elements of Latin, but it is equally clear that the boy, like most others, forgot it with the greatest facility as soon as he ceased studying.

The end of Washington’s school-days left him, if a good “cipherer,” a bad speller, and a still worse grammarian, but, fortunately, the termination of instruction did not by any means end his education.  From that time there is to be noted a steady improvement in both these failings.  Pickering stated that “when I first became acquainted with the General (in 1777) his writing was defective in grammar, and even spelling, owing to the insufficiency of his early education; of which, however, he gradually got the better in the subsequent years of his life, by the official perusal of some excellent models, particularly those of Hamilton; by writing with care and patient attention; and reading numerous, indeed multitudes of letters to and from his friends and correspondents.  This obvious improvement was begun during the war.”  In 1785 a contemporary noted that “the General is remarked for writing a most elegant letter,” adding that, “like the famous Addison, his writing excells his speaking,” and Jefferson said that “he wrote readily, rather diffusely, in an easy and correct style.  This he had acquired by conversation with the world, for his education was merely reading, writing and common arithmetic, to which he added surveying at a later day.”