Of course George was greatly disappointed, but he stayed at home, and worked and studied hard.  He wanted very much to learn how to earn money and help his mother, and so he studied to be a surveyor.

Surveyors measure the land, you know.  They measure people’s gardens and house-lots and farms, and can tell just where to put the fences, and how much land belongs to you and how much to me, so that we need never quarrel about it.

To be a good surveyor you have to be very careful indeed, and make no mistakes; and George Washington was careful and always tried to do his best, so that his surveys were the finest that could be made.

When he was only sixteen, he went off into the great forest, where no one lived but the Indians, to measure some land for a friend of his.  The weather was cold; he slept in a tent at night, or out of doors, on a bearskin by the fire, and he had to work very hard.  He met a great many Indians, and learned to know their ways in fighting and how to manage them.

Three years he worked hard at surveying, and at last he was a grown-up man!

He was tall and splendid then, over six feet high, and as straight as an Indian, with a rosy face and bright blue eyes.  He had large hands and fingers, and was wonderfully strong.  People say that his great tent, which it took three men to carry, Washington could lift with one hand and throw into the wagon.

He was very brave, too, you remember.  He could shoot well, and almost never missed his aim; he was used to walking many miles when he was surveying, and he could ride any horse he liked, no matter how wild and fierce.

So you see, when a man is strong, when he can shoot well, and walk and ride great distances, when he is never afraid of anything, that is just the man for a soldier; and I will tell you soon how George Washington came to be a great soldier.

GREAT GEORGE WASHINGTON.

PART II.

“The good story-teller effects much; he has an ennobling effect upon children,—­so much the more ennobling that he does not appear to intend it,”—­Froebel.

All this time while George Washington had been growing up,—­first a little boy, then a larger boy, and then a young surveyor,—­all this time the French and English and Indians were unhappy and uncomfortable in the country north of Virginia.  The French wanted all the land, so did the English, and the Indians saw that there would be no room for them, whichever had it, so they all began to trouble each other and to quarrel and fight.

These troubles grew so bad at last that the Virginians began to be afraid of the French and Indians, and thought they must have some soldiers of their own ready to fight.

George Washington was only nineteen then, but everybody knew he was wise and brave, so they chose him to teach the soldiers near his home how to march and to fight.