She sent George to an old-field school of Master Hobby, the sexton of the parish church, and then under his brother Lawrence's guidance to Master Williams. During one winter he rode on horseback ten miles to school every morning, returning home at night to prepare his tasks for the next day. At another time he ferried himself across the Rappahannock to his "day-school,"--the old academy at Fredericksburg, afterwards attended by Madison and Monroe. He was never sent, like other gentlemen's sons, to a college or university at home or abroad. Conscious of this, he was probably the more diligent to overcome by his own industry all deficiencies of opportunity. He proved an apt scholar, and soon possessed the rudiments of a practical education, which was expanded in later life by reading into scholarly accomplishments. But it was she, the mother, who first cast his mind and heart in the right mould. This schooling, supplemented by his own study and experience, was his only foundation for that "thorough knowledge of the technical part of his profession, that skill in military combinations, and extraordinary gifts of military administration," which has won the unstinted praise of England's brilliant historian. But it was from the training of early habits by his watchful mother that he became, as Lecky adds, "punctual, methodical, and exact in the highest degree, managing the minute details so essential to the efficiency of an army." From his mother he inherited qualities which she herself possessed in an eminent degree,--"a rare form of courage which can endure long-continued suspense, bear the weight of great responsibility, and encounter, without shrinking, risks of misrepresentation and unpopularity." She early proved herself to be a strong, self-reliant woman, with executive ability and a supreme power of awing and governing others. Her life was given to her children and to the care of a thriving plantation; to sowing, and planting, and reaping; to the rearing of fine, blooded cattle. Her children had a plain, abundant, comfortable home, and led healthy out-of-door lives. She made Truth and Honor her handmaidens, and in their defence ruled her house with austerity, that "austerity in woman so often the accompaniment of a rare power of loving, causing love to be piety, tenderness, religion, devotion strong as death." Surrounding her children with all the comforts of a well-governed household, she loved them, taught them, persuaded them. If all failed, if Sir Matthew Hale was in vain, and headlong youth yielded not when the right was at issue, she did not disdain to command another influence, pliant, pungent, prompt, and most convincing,--a bundle of keen rods gathered daily from the friendly peach tree! This lay always upon her historic table, or found place in her capacious pockets when she went abroad. It was the presence of this ally, offensive and defensive, which made harder the telling of the truth and enhanced the sublimity of virtue.