At Mount Vernon, then, we find George spending by far the greater portion of his holidays; and here he often fell in with young officers, fellow-soldiers of his brother, to whom with eager ears he was wont to listen as they recounted their adventures, and told of hard-fought battles by land and sea with the roving pirates, or sea-robbers, and proud and vengeful Spaniards. These stories so fired his ardent young spirit, that he longed of all things to become a great soldier, that he might go forth to fight the enemies of his country, wherever they were to be found, and drive them from the face of the wide earth. To give these feelings some relief, he would muster his little school-fellows at play-time, and take them through the lessons of a military drill; showing them how to fire and fall back, how to advance and retreat, how to form in line of march, how to pitch their tents for a night's encampment, how to lay an Indian ambuscade, how to scale a wall, how to storm a battery; and, in short, forty other evolutions not to be found in any work on military tactics ever written, and at which old Wooden Leg, had he been there, would have shaken his cocked hat with a dubious look. Then dividing them into two opposing armies, with himself at the head of one, and the tallest boy of the school leading on the other, he would incite them to fight sham battles with wooden swords, wooden guns, snow-balls, and such other munitions of war as came most readily to hand; in which George, no matter what might be the odds against him, or what superior advantages the enemy might have in weapons or ground, was always sure to come off victorious.