that during a period when
dueling was so common Farragut, though quick to resent, appears never to
have been involved in a serious personal difficulty.

Early in 1818 the Erie, carrying Mr. Folsom and his pupil, arrived in
Tunis, where the latter remained for nine months, pursuing his studies
on the site of the ancient maritime empire of Carthage. He mentions
particularly the subjects of mathematics, English literature, French,
and Italian. For languages he had great natural aptitude, and in later
life was able to converse in several. The monotony of study was varied
by the society of the few but agreeable foreign families residing in
Tunis, and by occasional excursions in the neighborhood; when the
interest of the present was happily blended, under the guidance of such
a man as Mr. Folsom, with thoughts upon the past grandeur and history of
the Carthaginian empire and the Roman province which had successively
flourished on that soil. In one of these excursions Farragut received a
partial stroke of the sun, from the effects of which he suffered for
many years.

The period of his stay in Tunis exceeded the original intention, but
doubtless with the approval of the commodore. It was brought to a close
in the fall of 1818 by an outbreak of the plague, which increased to
such an alarming extent that Mr. Folsom felt compelled to send his
charge away just when the approach of another winter of comparative
idleness for the squadron would have justified a longer stay. But deaths
in Tunis had risen to a hundred a day, and all the families were living
in a state of complete isolation, the houses being barricaded against
outsiders; therefore on the 9th of October Farragut departed in a
Genoese brig for Leghorn. Thence, after a quarantine of forty days, he
went to Pisa; and from there to Messina, where the squadron had
assembled for the winter of 1818-'19.

The friendship between Farragut and Mr. Folsom did not end with this
separation. The latter survived to the end of the civil war, and was
thus privileged to follow the successful and great career of the admiral
to whom, while yet an unformed boy, he had thoughtfully extended a
helping hand. As late as 1865 letters passed between the two, showing
that both cherished warm recollections of that early association; Mr.
Folsom dating his, as though careful to make the coincidence, on the
anniversary of the day when he parted with his pupil in the harbor of
Tunis and returned alone