Early the shadow of death crossed his boyish path, for his baby sister,
Mildred, born soon after he was seven, died before he was nine.

The first playmate Washington had, out of his own immediate family, was
another Lawrence Washington, a very distant cousin, who lived at Chotauk
on the Potomac, and who, with his brother, Robert Washington, early won
Washington's regard, and kept it through life. When Washington made his
will he remembered them, writing, "to the acquaintances and friends of
my juvenile years, Lawrence Washington and Robert Washington, I give my
other two gold-headed canes having my arms engraved on them."

It was at Chotauk, with Lal and Bob Washington, that George Washington
first met with traffic between the old world and the new. There was no
money used except tobacco notes, which passed among merchants in London
and Amsterdam as cash. Foreign ships brought across the ocean goods that
the Virginians needed, and the captains sold the goods for these tobacco
notes. Much of Washington's time was spent with these boys, and when he
grew old he recalled the young eyes of the Chotauk lads, as they, with
him, had stood on the river-bank vainly trying to see clearly some
object beyond vision, and in memory of the time he wrote in his will,
"To each I leave one of my spy-glasses which constituted part of my
equipage during the late war."

Of Washington's first school there is no record or tradition other than
that gathered by Parson Weems. He says: "The first place of education to
which George was ever sent was a little old field school kept by one of
his father's tenants, named Hobby, an honest, poor old man, who acted
in the double capacity of sexton and schoolmaster. Of his skill as a
gravedigger tradition is silent; but for a teacher of youth his
qualifications were certainly of the humbler sort, making what is