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 omissions of the subject-matter. I have transcribed, and here give to the public, these maxims complete and with literal exactness, just as they were recorded by Washington, believing that the reader will prefer to have them as they were left by him with all their peculiarities, without any of the polishings of an editor. Mr. Sparks says: "The source from which they were derived is not mentioned." In another place he states that they are "drawn from miscellaneous sources," and again he speaks of them as "these rules thus early selected and adopted as his guide." Irving, in his "Life of Washington," speaking of these rules of civility, says: "It was probably his intercourse with them [the Fairfaxes] and his ambition to acquit himself well in their society, that set him upon compiling a code of morals and manners, which still exists in manuscript in his own handwriting."