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 to settle definitely the question of authorship, I made a very thorough search through all the treatises on these topics printed before 1745, contained in the Library of Congress, but without discovering anything either identical with, or at all similar to them, in form or arrangement. The method adopted by the early writers on these subjects was to treat them by chapters, as "on etiquette at Court," "in the parlor," "at a ball," "at a dinner," &c. But nowhere do I find the whole subject matter of civility and behavior in company reduced to a single series of comprehensive maxims as they are in this paper. These rules of good behavior in Washington's own handwriting were examined, and fifty-seven of them published by Sparks in his Life and Writings of Washington, Vol. II, p. 412, but with numerous verbal alterations and considerable omissions