deportment: you must not turn your back on persons to whom you talk.
Others touch morals rather than manners. One imagines that the parson
or elderly uncles allowed themselves to bestow this indisputably
correct advice upon the youths whom they were interested in. A boy
brought up rigidly on these doctrines could hardly fail to become a
prig unless he succeeded in following the last injunction of all:
"Labor to keep alive in your heart, that little spark of celestial
fire called conscience."

When he was eleven years old, Washington's father died, and his older
half-brother, Lawrence, who inherited the estate now known as Mount
Vernon, became his guardian. Lawrence had married the daughter of a
neighbor, William Fairfax, agent for the large Fairfax estate. Fairfax
and he had served with the Colonial forces at Cartagena under Admiral
Vernon, from whom the Washington manor took its name. Lord Fairfax,
William's cousin and head of the family, offered George work on the
survey of his domain. George, then a sturdy lad of sixteen, accepted
gladly, and for more than two years he carried it on. The Fairfax
estate extended far into the west, beyond the immediate tidewater
district, beyond the fringe of sparsely settled clearings, into the
wilderness itself. The effect of his experience as surveyor lasted
throughout George Washington's life. His self-reliance and his courage
never flagged. Sometimes he went alone and passed weeks among the
solitudes; sometimes he had a companion whom he had to care for as
well as for himself. But besides the toughening of his character which
this pioneer life assured him, he got much information, which greatly
influenced, years later, his views on the development, not only of
Virginia, but of the Northwest. Perhaps from this time there entered
into his heart the conviction that the strongest bond of union must
sometime bind together the various colonies, so different in resources