could be more methodical. He kept his accounts
rigorously, entering even the cost of repairing a hairpin for a ward.
He was a keen farmer, and it is amusing to find him recording in his
careful journal that there are 844,800 seeds of "New River Grass" to the
pound Troy and so determining how many should be sown to the acre. Not
many youths would write out as did Washington, apparently from French
sources, and read and reread elaborate "Rules of Civility and Decent
Behaviour in Company and Conversation." In the fashion of the age
of Chesterfield they portray the perfect gentleman. He is always to
remember the presence of others and not to move, read, or speak without
considering what may be due to them. In the true spirit of the time he
is to learn to defer to persons of superior quality. Tactless laughter
at his own wit, jests that have a sting of idle gossip, are to be
avoided. Reproof is to be given not in anger but in a sweet and mild
temper. The rules descend even to manners at table and are a revelation
of care in self-discipline. We might imagine Oliver Cromwell drawing up
such rules, but not Napoleon or Wellington.

The class to which Washington belonged prided itself on good birth and
good breeding. We picture him as austere, but, like Oliver Cromwell,
whom in some respects he resembles, he was very human in his personal
relations. He liked a glass of wine. He was fond of dancing and he went
to the theater, even on Sunday. He was, too, something of a lady's man;
"He can be downright impudent sometimes," wrote a Southern lady, "such
impudence, Fanny, as you and I like." In old age he loved to have the
young and gay about him. He could break into furious oaths and no one
was a better master of what we may call honorable guile in dealing with
wily savages, in circulating falsehoods that would deceive the enemy in
time of war, or in pursuing a business advantage. He played cards for
money and carefully entered loss and gain in his accounts. He loved
horseracing and horses, and nothing pleased him more than to talk of
that noble animal. He kept hounds and until his burden of cares became
too great was an eager devotee of hunting. His shooting was of a type
more heroic than that of an English squire spending a day on a moor
with guests and gamekeepers and returning to comfort in the evening.
Washington went off on expeditions into the forest lasting many days and
shared the life in the woods of rough men, sleeping ofte