which was almost altogether a naval war, and the brilliant victories of our sea-captains at that time, kindled unconsciously in the ardent mind of the boy the first faint fires of military glory connected with the sea. When those stories of combats on the ocean and on the great lakes were related with enthusiasm at the family fireside or table, it is quite impossible that a mind so susceptible even as a child to honor, should not have caught the spirit and the glow of such stirring events.

The war of 1812, and the severe illness of his father, brought about a change of scene; and the family removed from New Haven to Cheshire, a beautiful inland village in the same state and county, in the spring of the year 1813. There they continued to reside, in a fine old family mansion, until the death of Governor Foote in 1846.

A word more should here be said of the father of the Admiral, for from him the son inherited some of his strongest traits of character.

Samuel A. Foote was born November 8, 1780. Though of a delicate constitution in childhood and youth, he prepared for and graduated at Yale College before he was seventeen years of age. He subsequently pursued the study of the law with Judge Reeve, of Litchfield, Connecticut, until impaired health compelled him to give it up; and he began business in New Haven, in the West India trade, in 1803. From 1817 to 1835 he was in public life, filling all the chief political offices in the state. While governor of the state he received the degree of LL.D. from Yale College. He was a notable example of an intelligent and practical American statesman, or, perhaps, the better word would be politician, of the old school, with the marked conservatism of the shrewd men of his state, and with the still higher qualities of independence and firmness.

These sterner traits, enforced often by a severe countenance and piercing look, were mingled with a vein of kindly humor, which made him popular with all classes, and even with his