them he evolved the cherry-tree, the refusal to fight or permit
fighting among the boys at school, and the initials in the garden.
This last story is to the effect that Augustine Washington planted
seeds in such a manner that when they sprouted they formed on the
earth the initials of his son's name, and the boy being much delighted
thereby, the father explained to him that it was the work of the
Creator, and thus inculcated a profound belief in God. This tale
is taken bodily from Dr. Beattie's biographical sketch of his son,
published in England in 1799, and may be dismissed at once. As to the
other two more familiar anecdotes there is not a scintilla of evidence
that they had any foundation, and with them may be included the colt
story, told by Mr. Custis, a simple variation of the cherry-tree
theme, which is Washington's early love of truth. Weems says that
his stories were told him by a lady, and "a good old gentleman," who
remembered the incidents, while Mr. Custis gives no authority for his
minute account of a trivial event over a century old when he wrote.
To a writer who invented the rector of Mount Vernon, the further
invention of a couple of Boswells would be a trifle. I say Boswells
advisedly, for these stories are told with the utmost minuteness, and
the conversations between Washington and his father are given as if
from a stenographic report. How Mr. Custis, usually so accurate, came
to be so far infected with the Weems myth as to tell the colt story
after the Weems manner, cannot now be determined. There can be no
doubt that Washington, like most healthy boys, got into a good deal of
mischief, and it is not at all impossible that he injured fruit-trees
and confessed that he had done so. It may be accepted as certain that
he rode and mastered many unbroken thoroughbred colts, and it is
possible that one of them burst a blood-vessel in the process and
died, and that the boy promptly told his mother of the accident. But
this is the utmost credit which these two anecdotes can claim. Even so
much as this cannot be said of certain other improving tales of like
nature. That Washington lectured his playmates on the wickedness of
fighting, and in the year 1754 allowed himself to be knocked down in
the presence of his soldiers, and thereupon begged his assailant's
pardon for having spoken roughly to him, are stories so silly and
so foolishly impossible that they do not deserve an instant's
consideration.

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