And Benjamin Franklin told some of them about the words his uncle had read to him when he was a boy: “Seest thou a man diligent in his business? He shall stand before kings.” GEORGE WASHINGTON AND HIS MOTHER When George Washington was a little boy there was no such country as the United States. The part of America where he was born was called Virginia, but it was not a state then. It was a colony, or new country, settled by people from England. These colonists lived along the eastern shore. Back from the sea coast were beautiful valleys and high hills covered with woods. That region was called a “howling wilderness,” because there were tribes of Indians roaming through its forests, hunting bears and wolves, war-whooping, and killing and scalping one another. Sometimes they stole up to a lone cabin or settlement to murder a few white people who were brave enough to try to live there, and set fire to their little home. The wealthy Virginia colonists built handsome houses on their large estates. “The First Families of Virginia,” as they came to be called, owned negroes that had been stolen from the jungles of Africa and sold to the planters. These slaves worked in the tobacco fields and did other work on the farms. Then there were also white men who had broken the laws in England, and were condemned to hard labor in the fields of Virginia instead of being shut up in the prisons of England. As most of the labor on their farms and plantations was done by black slaves and white convicts, the young gentlemen of the colony thought all that kind of work was too low for them to do. So, instead of laboring to improve their new country, as men did in other colonies, the strong young men of Virginia led lives of ease--drinking, carousing, gambling, and horse racing. Little George Washington’s father was a wealthy planter who owned three plantations. He was a member of a great English company buying up vast tracts of land in the new country. He also owned a big interest in some iron mines. And besides all these, he was owner and master of a ship which took his tobacco and iron to London and brought back cargoes of silks, furniture, tea, coffee, and many other things not then made or raised in Virginia. Mr. Washington sometimes sailed to England on his ship and commanded his crew. From this he was called “Captain.” Captain Washington’s oldest son, Lawrence, fourteen years older than George, had enlisted in the army while at school in England, and was now a captain fighting the Spaniards under Admiral Vernon. When George was seven years old the Washington house was burned down, and the family had to move about fifty miles in a sailboat to another estate named “Ferry Farm,” on the Rappahannock River. From there George went to school, riding several miles a day on his own pony.