More than 275 years ago, a young George Washington put pen to paper to copy down 110 Rules of Civility and Decent Behavior. Found in a copy book, the original source of these rules remains unsettled, although scholars note the similarity with a French Jesuit work on etiquette for young men originally published in the 16th century. These rules provided not only a critical penmanship exercise for young Washington but were also arguably formative to the development of our first president's character, accidently or not. Indeed, Richard Brookhiser, in his preface to a more recent publication, posits that the rules helped "form the inner man (or boy) by shaping the outer" (Brookhiser, Richard, Introduction, Rules of Civility: the 110 Precepts that Guided Our First President in War and Peace by George Washington, University of Virginia Press 2003. pp 1, 4).