sheds, trying everything and seeing how well he could cut, and at last
he went into the orchard. There he saw a young cherry-tree, as
straight as a soldier, with the most beautiful, smooth, shining bark,
waving its boughs in a very provoking way, as if to say, "You can't
cut me down, and you needn't try."

Little George did try and he did cut it down, and then was very sorry,
for he found it was not so easy to set it up again.

[Illustration: The letters of his name . . . the soft earth]

His father was angry, of course, for he lived in a new country, and
three thousand miles from any place where he could get good fruit
trees; but when the little boy told the truth about it, his father
said he would rather lose a thousand cherry-trees than have his son
tell a lie.

Now perhaps this never happened; but if George Washington ever did cut
down a cherry-tree, you may be sure he told the truth about it.

I think, though he grew to be such a wise, wonderful man, that he must
have been just a bright, happy boy like you, when he was little.

But everybody knows three things about him,--that he always told the
truth, that he never was afraid of anything, and that he always loved
and minded his mother.

When little George was eleven years old, his good father died, and his
poor mother was left alone to take care of her boys and her great
plantation. What a busy mother she was! She mended and sewed, she