in New York City.  Even then, his passion for an education did not develop as his parents hoped.  He left the college in the course of a few months.  Throughout John Custis’s perversities, and as long as he lived, Washington’s kindness and real affection never wavered.  Although he had now taught himself to practice complete self-control, he could treat with consideration the young who had it not.

By nature Washington was a man of business.  He wished to see things grow, not so much for the actual increase in value which that indicated, as because increase seemed to be a proof of proper methods.  Not content, therefore, with rounding out his holdings at Mount Vernon and Mrs. Washington’s estate at the White House, he sought investment in the unsettled lands on the Ohio and in Florida, and on the Mississippi.  It proved to be a long time before the advance of settlement in the latter regions made his investments worth much, and during the decade after his marriage in 1759, we must think of him as a man of great energy and calm judgment who was bent not only on making Mount Vernon a model country place on the outside, but a civilized home within.  In its furnishings and appointments it did not fall behind the manors of the Virginia men of fashion and of wealth in that part of the country.  Before Washington left the army, he recognized that his education had been irregular and inadequate, and he set himself to make good his defects by studying and reading for himself.  There were no public libraries, but some of the gentlemen made collections of books.  They learned of new publications in England from journals which were few in number and incomplete.  Doubtless advertising went by word of mouth.  The lists of things desired which Washington sent out to his agents, Robert Cary and Company, once a year or oftener, usually contained the titles of many books, chiefly on architecture, and he was especially intent on keeping up with new methods and experiments in farming.  Thus, among the orders in May, 1759, among a request for “Desert Glasses and Stand for Sweetmeats Jellies, etc.; 50 lbs.  Spirma Citi Candles; stockings etc.,” he asks for “the newest and most approved Treatise of Agriculture—­besides this, send me a Small piece in Octavo—­called a New System of Agriculture, or a Speedy Way to Grow Rich; Longley’s Book of Gardening; Gibson upon Horses, the latest Edition in Quarto.”  This same invoice contains directions for “the Busts—­one of Alexander the Great, another of Charles XII, of Sweden, and a fourth of the King of Prussia (Frederick the Great); also of Prince Eugene and the Duke of Marlborough, but somewhat smaller.”  Do these celebrities represent Washington’s heroes in 1759?

As time went on, his commissions for books were less restricted to agriculture, and comprised also works on history, biography, and government.