your boys to sea and the sailors will educate them, is a safe maxim. But
Nelson was an exception, for even in his boyhood he had held little
converse with his mates, and in the frolics on shore he took no part.
Physically he was too weak to meet them on a level, and so he pitted his
brain against their brawn. He studied and grubbed at his books while
they gambled, caroused and "saw the town."

When he was in command of the schoolship, the second officer taunted him
about his insignificant size. His answer was: "Sir, the pistol makes all
men of equal size--to your place! And consider yourself fined ten days'
pay."

In buying supplies he refused to sign vouchers unless the precise goods
were delivered and the price was right. On being told that this was very
foolish, and that a captain was entitled to a quiet commission on all
purchases, he began an investigation on his own account and found that
it was the rule that naval and army supplies cost the government on an
average twenty-five per cent more than they were worth, and that the
names of laborers once placed on the payroll remained there for
eternity. In his zeal the young captain made a definite statement and
brought charges, showing where the government was being robbed of vast
sums. On reaching London he was called before the Board of Admiralty and
duly cautioned to mind his own affairs.

His third act of indiscretion was his marriage in the Island of Nevis to
Mrs. Frances Woolward Nesbit, a widow with one child. Widows often fall
easy prey to predatory sailormen, and sometimes sailormen fall easy prey
to widows. The widow was "unobjectionable," to use the words of Southey,
and versed in all the polite dissipation of a prosperous slave-mart
capital. Nelson looked upon all English-speaking women as angels of
light and models of sympathy, insight and self-sacrifice.

Time disillusioned him; and he settled down into the firm belief that a
woman was only a child--whimsical, selfish, idle, intent on gauds,
jewels and chucks under the chin from specimens of the genus homo--any
man--but to be tolerated and gently looked after for the good of the
race. He took his wife to England and left her at his father's parsonage
and sailed away for the Mediterranean to fight his country's battles.

Among other errands he had dispatches to Sir William Hamilton, British
Envoy at the Court of Naples. Sir William had never met Nelson; but he
was so impressed at his first meeting wit