to anybody, hearken
not, nor speak or laugh.

"37. Speak not evil of the absent; for it is unjust.

"38. Make no show of taking delight in your victuals; feed not
with greediness; cut your food with a knife, and lean not on
the table; neither find fault with what you eat.

"39. Be not angry at the table, whatever happens; and, if you
have reason to be so, show it not, but put on a cheerful face,
especially if there be strangers; for good humor makes of one
dish a feast.

"40. If you speak of God or his attributes, let it be
seriously, in reverence; and honor and obey your parents.

"41. Let your recreations be manful, not sinful.

"42. Labor to keep in your breast that little spark of
celestial fire called conscience."

Now, does it not strike you, my dear children, as being most truly
wonderful that it should have ever entered the mind of a boy of
thirteen to lay down for his own guidance and self-improvement such
rules and principles as these I have just repeated? It certainly must.
And yet when I tell you that he strictly adhered to them through life,
and squared his conduct by them daily, you will, no doubt, think it
quite unreasonable that he could have been other than the good and
great man he was.

These writings I have mentioned filled several quires of paper; and
together with his business papers, letters, journals, and
account-books, written later in life, and with the same neatness and
precision, are still preserved at Mount Vernon with pious care; and
are even now to be seen by those who go on pilgrimages to that sacred
spot, although, since many of them were penned, more than a hundred
years have come and gone.

And thus, my children, you have seen young Washington, at an age when
most boys are wasting their precious hours in idle sports, seeking to
acquire those habits of industry, punctuality, and method, which
afterwards enabled him so to economize time and labor as to do with
ease and expedition what others did with difficulty and tardiness. You
have seen him making the best use of the slender means within his
reach for storing his mind with those treasures of knowledge, and
schooling his heart in the daily practice of those exalted virtues,
which, after a life well spent and work well done, make good his title
to the name he bears,--the greatest and the wisest of human kind.

At last, the day came when George was to leav