Nor was his mother the only strong and wholesome influence over his home life. His eldest brother, Lawrence, played an important part in shaping his character. According to the custom of those days, Lawrence, as the eldest son of a Virginia planter, would inherit the bulk of his father's estate. He was therefore sent to an excellent school in England, to receive the training which would fit him to be a gentleman and a leader in social life. For learning was not held in such high esteem as ability to look after the business of a large plantation and take a leading part in the public life of the county and the colony. With such a training Lawrence returned from England, a young man of culture and fine manners and well fitted to be a man of affairs. From this time on George, now only seven or eight years old, looked up to his brother, fourteen years his senior, with cordial admiration. Lawrence became George's model of manhood, and returned his younger brother's devotion with a tender love. Soon after the death of his father, the boy went to live with his brother Augustine on the Bridge's Creek Plantation, in order to have the advantages of a good school there. Many of his copy-books and books of exercises, containing such legal forms as receipts, bills and deeds, as well as pictures of birds and faces, have been preserved. In these books there are, also, his rules of conduct, maxims which he kept before him as aids to good behavior. The following are a few of them: "Every action in company ought to be with some sign of respect to those present. "When a man does all he can, though it succeeds not well, blame not him that did it. "Undertake not what you cannot perform, but be careful to keep your promise. "Speak not evil of the absent: for it is unjust. "Labor to keep alive in your breast that little spark of celestial fire called conscience." [Illustration: The English Colonies and the French Claims in 1754.] In George's school-days he heard many stories about wars with the Indians and about troubles between the English and the French colonies. Moreover, his brother Lawrence had been a soldier in the West Indies in a war between England and Spain, from which he had returned full of enthusiasm about what he had felt and seen. It was at this time that Lawrence changed the name of his plantation on the Potomac to Mount Vernon, in honor of Admiral Vernon, under whose command he had fought. Catching his brother's military spirit, George organized his boy friends into little military companies, and, as their commander, drilled them, paraded them, and led them in their sham battles in the school-yard.