alone proved, to my own mind, that Washington was in nowise responsible
for these Rules. In the school he was attending when they were written
there were girls; and, as he was rather precocious in his admirations, a
compilation of his own could hardly omit all consideration of conduct
towards ladies, or in their presence. There were other reasons also
which led me to dissent from my friend Dr. Toner, in this instance, and
to institute a search, which has proved successful, for the source of
the Rules of Civility.

While gathering materials for a personal and domestic biography of
Washington,[1] I discovered that in 1745 he was attending school in
Fredericksburg, Virginia. The first church (St. George's) of the infant
town was just then finished, and the clergyman was the Rev. James
Marye, a native of France. It is also stated in the municipal records of
the town that its first school was taught by French people, and it is
tolerably certain that Mr. Marye founded the school soon after his
settlement there as Rector, which was in 1735, eight years after the
foundation of Fredericksburg. I was thus led to suspect a French origin
of the Rules of Civility. This conjecture I mentioned to my friend Dr.
Garnett, of the British Museum, and, on his suggestion, explored an old
work in French and Latin in which ninety-two of the Rules were found.
This interesting discovery, and others to which it led, enable me to
restore the damaged manuscript to completeness.

[Footnote 1: George Washington and Mount Vernon. A collection of
Washington's unpublished agricultural and personal letters. Edited, with
historical and genealogical Introduction, by Moncure Daniel Conway.
Published by the L.I. Historical Society: Brooklyn, New York, 1889.]

The various intrinsic interest of these Rules is much enhanced by the