French protestant pilgrim, unknown to fame, in the New World. They were
taught to a small school of girls and boys, in a town of hardly a
hundred inhabitants. They are maxims partly ethical, but mainly relate
to manners and civility; they are wise, gentle, and true. A character
built on them would be virtuous, and probably great. The publisher of
the English version (1665) says that "Mr. Pinchester, a learned scholar
of Oxford," bought 250 copies for a great school he was about to open in
London. Probably the school founded by James Marye was the first in the
New World in which good manners were seriously taught.[1] Nay, where is
there any such school to day?

[Footnote 1: It is probable that Mr. Marye's fine precedent was
followed, to some extent, in the Fredericksburg Academy. The present
writer, who entered it just a hundred years after George Washington
recorded the "Rules," recalls, as his first clear remembrance of the
school, some words of the worthy Principal, Thomas Hanson, on
gentlemanly behaviour. Alluding to some former pupil, who had become
distinguished, he said, "I remember, on one occasion, in a room where
all were gathered around the fire--the weather being very cold--that
some one entered, and this boy promptly arose and gave the new-comer his
seat at the fire. It made an impression on me which I have never
forgotten." And how long have lasted in the memory of the writer hereof
the very words of our teacher's homage to the considerate boy who obeyed
Washington's eighth Rule!]

Just this one colonial school, by the good fortune of having for its
master or superintendent an ex-jesuit French scholar, we may suppose
instructed in civility; and out of that school, in what was little more
than a village, came an exceptionally large number of eminent men. In
that school three American Presidents received their early