th that we began a still hunt; not from policy, but
because no other course was open, and by degrees we converted all the
committee but three. This was quite an achievement in its way; for, as
one of the members said to me, "It is rather hard to oppose the
chairman in a matter of this kind. Still, I am satisfied it is a good
thing, and I will vote for it." So we got our appropriation by a big
majority. Mr. Herbert was very nice about his discomfiture. That a set
of uninfluential naval officers should so unexpectedly have got the
better of him, in his position, had a humorous side which he was ready
to see; though it is possible we, on whose side the laugh was, enjoyed
it more. He afterwards, when Secretary of the Navy, came to think much
better of the College, which flourished under him.

I had soon to find that my mouth had more than one side on which to
laugh. Confident that we were out of the woods, I proceeded to halloo;
for in an address made at the opening of the session of 1888, alluding
to the doubt long felt about the appropriation, I said, "That fear has
now happily been removed." I reckoned without the Secretary, who
issued an order, a bolt out of the blue, depriving the College not
only of its building, but of its independent existence; transferring
it to the care of the commander of the Torpedo Station, on another
island in Narragansett Bay. This ended my official existence as
president of the College, and I was sent off to Puget Sound; one of a
commission to choose a site for a navy-yard there. I never knew, nor
cared, just why Whitney took this course, but I afterwards had an
amusing experience with him, showing how men forget; like my old
commodore his moment of despondency about the outcome of the war. In
later years he and I were members of a dining club in New York. I then
had had my success and recognition. One evening I chanced to say to
him, apropos of what I do not now recall, "It was at the time, you
know, that you sent Sampson to the Naval Academy, and Goodrich to the
Torpedo Station." "Yes," he rejoined, complacently; "and I sent you to
the War College." It was literally true, doubtless; his act, though
not his selection; but in view of the cold comfort and the petard with
which he there favored me, for Whitney to fancy himself a patron to
me, except on a Johnsonian definition of the word,[16] was as humorous
a performance as I have known.

So I went to Puget Sound, a very pleasant as well as