From this book, too, came two qualities which clung to him through life. His handwriting, so easy, flowing, and legible, was modelled from the engraved “copy” sheet, and certain forms of spelling were acquired here that were never corrected, though not the common usage of his time. To the end of his life, Washington wrote lie, lye; liar, lyar; ceiling, cieling; oil, oyl; and blue, blew, as in his boyhood he had learned to do from this book. Even in his carefully prepared will, “lye” was the form in which he wrote the word. It must be acknowledged that, aside from these errors which he had been taught, through his whole life Washington was a non-conformist as regarded the King’s English: struggle as he undoubtedly did, the instinct of correct spelling was absent, and thus every now and then a verbal slip appeared: extravagence, lettely (for lately), glew, riffle (for rifle), latten (for Latin), immagine, winder, rief (for rife), oppertunity, spirma citi, yellow oaker,—such are types of his lapses late in life, while his earlier letters and journals are far more inaccurate. It must be borne in mind, however, that of these latter we have only the draughts, which were undoubtedly written carelessly, and the two letters actually sent which are now known, and the text of his surveys before he was twenty, are quite as well written as his later epistles. [Illustration: _Easy Copies to Write by_. COPY OF PENMANSHIP BY WHICH WASHINGTON’S HANDWRITING WAS FORMED] On the death of his father, Washington went to live with his brother Augustine, in order, it is presumed, that he might take advantage of a good school near Wakefield, kept by one Williams; but after a time he returned to his mother’s, and attended the school kept by the Rev. James Marye, in Fredericksburg. It has been universally asserted by his biographers that he studied no foreign language, but direct proof to the contrary exists in a copy of Patrick’s Latin translation of Homer, printed in 1742, the fly-leaf of a copy of which bears, in a school-boy hand, the inscription: “Hunc mihi quaeso (bone Vir) Libellum Redde, si forsan tenues repertum Ut Scias qui sum sine fraude Scriptum. Est mihi nomen, Georgio Washington, George Washington, Fredericksburg, Virginia.” It is thus evident that the reverend teacher gave Washington at least the first elements of Latin, but it is equally clear that the boy, like most others, forgot it with the greatest facility as soon as he ceased studying.