th a sense
of duty which while a midshipman had led him to persist defiantly in a
very unpopular--though very proper--course of action, he yet seemed to
see no impropriety in utterly neglecting professional acquirement,
rather boasting of his ignorance. The result was that, having been
detailed for the European cruise, he was subsequently detached; I
think from doubt of his fitness for the deck of a sailing-vessel.
While at the Academy at this time, he took a first step in his
proposed career by writing a pamphlet, the title and scope of which I
now forget; but unluckily, by a slip of the pen, he wrote on the first
page, "We judge the _known_ by the _unknown_." This, being speedily
detected, raised a laugh, and I fear prevented most from further
exploration of a somewhat misty thesis. He was rather chummy with me,
and tried mildly to persuade me that I also should stand poised on the
navy for a flight into the empyrean; but, if fain to soar, which I do
not think I was, like Raleigh, I feared a fall. For himself, poor
fellow, weighted by his aspirations, he said to me, "I don't fear
death, I fear life;" and death caught him early, in 1864, in the shape
of yellow-fever. One of his idiosyncrasies was a faith in coffee as a
panacea; and I heard that while sickening he deluged himself with that
beverage, to what profit let physicians say.

The decision that one of the practice-ships should go to Europe had, I
think, been determined by the officer who was to have commanded the
_Macedonian_, the vessel chosen for that purpose. She was not the one
of that name captured in 1812 by the _United States_,--the only one of
our frigate captures brought into port,--but a successor to the title.
Before she went into commission, the first commander was detached to
service at the front; but no change was made in her destination, even
if any misgivings were felt. One of my fellow-officers at the Academy,
who was not going, remarked to me pleasantly that, if we fell in with
the _Alabama_, she would work round us like a cooper round a cask; an
encouraging simile to one who has looked upon that cheerful and much
one-sided performance. We were all too young--I, the senior
lieutenant, was but twenty-two--and too light-hearted to be troubled
with forebodings; and, indeed, there was in reason no adequate
inducement for the Confederate cruiser to alter her existing plans in
order to take the _Macedonian_. Had we come fairly in her way, to
gobble