this book, too, came two qualities which clung to him through life.
His handwriting, so easy, flowing, and legible, was modelled from the
engraved "copy" sheet, and certain forms of spelling were acquired here
that were never corrected, though not the common usage of his time. To the
end of his life, Washington wrote lie, lye; liar, lyar; ceiling, cieling;
oil, oyl; and blue, blew, as in his boyhood he had learned to do from this
book. Even in his carefully prepared will, "lye" was the form in which he
wrote the word. It must 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