He passed it on the frontier, fighting nature, the Indians, and the French.

He went in a schoolboy; he came out the first soldier in the colonies, and one of the leading men of Virginia.

Let us pause a moment and look at him as he stands on the threshold of this momentous period, rightly called momentous because it was the formative period in the life of such a man.
[Illustration: LAWRENCE WASHINGTON] He had just passed his sixteenth birthday.

He was tall and muscular, approaching the stature of more than six feet which he afterwards attained.

He was not yet filled out to manly proportions, but was rather spare, after the fashion of youth.