Taking his inspiration from a 16th century French manual on etiquette, young George Washington compiled his own set of instructions under the title, The Rules of Civility and Decent Behavior. These concise rules to live by have been studied and copied by millions of readers eager to absorb Washington’s secrets of success in life and work. Neither unduly severe nor sentimental, the rules have stood the test of time and still reverberate today.

Among the manuscript books of George Washington, preserved in the State Archives at Washington City, the earliest bears the date, written in it by himself, 1745. Washington was born February 11, 1731 O. S., so that while writing in this book he was either near the close of his fourteenth, or in his fifteenth, year. It is entitled "Forms of Writing", has thirty folio pages, and the contents, all in his boyish handwriting, are sufficiently curious. Amid copied forms of exchange, bonds, receipts, sales, and similar exercises, occasionally, in ornate penmanship, there are poetic selections, among them lines of a religious tone on "True Happiness". But the great interest of the book centres in the pages headed : "Rules of Civility and Decent Behaviour in Company and Conversation". The book had been gnawed at the bottom by Mount Vernon mice, before it reached the State Archives, and nine of the 110 Rules have thus suffered, the sense of several being lost...