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 evident that the reverend teacher gave Washington at least the
first elements of Latin, but it is equally clear that the boy, like most
others, forgot it with the greatest facility as soon as he ceased
studying.

The end of Washington's school-days left him, if a good "cipherer," a bad
speller, and a still worse grammarian, but, fortunately, the termination
of instruction did not by any means end his education. From that time
there is to be noted a steady improvement in both these failings.
Pickering stated that "when I first became acquainted with the General (in