told of him, which, considering the austere setting of circumstances in which it appears, must have been at the time ludicrous enough. His oldest brother John, who shared his funloving temper, had played some successful prank, which, by all principles of boy-law, it was incumbent upon Andrew to return with interest. He armed himself with a no less effectual and no more destructive missile than a rotten apple, and, standing behind a door, patiently awaited his opportunity. At length hearing some one approaching whom he supposed to be his brother, he darted from his concealment, and threw the apple with all his force, when, to his horror, he saw that it had taken effect in the bosom of his father's ruffled shirt, who had just come out of his chamber, having carefully arrayed himself for the occasion of delivering a public address on the return of peace. The indignant sire, supposing that the jest. was intended for himself, rushed to seize the offender, but fright lent wings to his feet; and as the church-bell was already tolling for the public service, the pursuit was necessarily abandoned to allow time for a speedy change of dress; so that an opportunity was gained by Andrew to send in an explanation and apology; and, to his infinite satisfaction, the young rogue was released with a severe reprimand.

Other anecdotes are told, quite as trivial in themselves, which, however, are characteristic of the spirit of the boy, and show that his resolute nature manifested itself early. While but a wee bit of a lad, he was one day leading his younger brother Augustus, who was dressed in a red frock, across a meadow where there was a large merino ram. The buck, excited by the red dress, charged furiously upon the little fellow. Andrew bravely threw himself in the way, and received the shock; and this he did several times, until they had reached the fence in safety. His brother (Hon. John A. Foote, of Cleveland, Ohio, who tells this story) says of the occurrence, that it was undoubtedly the admiral's first ram fight. B

Another story of Andrew's youthful days might have been told of hundreds and thousands of plucky boys, but which, at all events, shows that the spirit of fight was born in him, and was ready to manifest itself on any real provocation of insult or injustice. When he had grown to be a bigger lad, he went one winter's day into a shoemaker's shop, and left the shop door open behind him. One of the workmen thereupon ordered him in a peremptory way to shut the door. Andrew thought the tone was too authoritative, and refused to shut the door unless asked civilly. The workman, thereupon growing wrathful, told him that if he did not close the door he would thrash him; and at once the ire of our young hero was kindled, and Crispin was laid helpless across his own bench, while the old master, who had watched the affair over his spectacles, instead of interfering, cried out, "Bravo! bravo! well done, lad!"

His brother John says of his early years: "He was a stuttering, stammering, left-handed little boy. A cot was fitted tightly over his left hand, and he was required to use only his right. When he commenced speaking, he was admonished to speak slowly, and to beat time with his right hand.

"When we were boys together, it was a rule in our family to commence the Sabbath early on Saturday evening, and play was to be suspended until we could see three stars on Sunday evening. Herschel and other distinguished men have had great credit for discovering new stars, but I have sometimes queried whether the future admiral did not in those days discover some stars never seen by any of them. Very certain I am that the play sometimes commenced before I could see any stars; and I am equally certain that he never, in after-life, watched for them in a storm at sea, or on a lee shore, more anxiously than when a boy, on a Sunday evening, he watched for them as a license to begin his sports.

"As a boy, he was full of fun and frolic-a real boy—but

Influences that drew Him to the Sea. 19

he was genial, kind, and popular, and I do not remember of his ever being quarrelsome."

Such incidents of his youthful days might be multiplied; it would, however, be interesting to inquire what it was that gave the first turn to his life, and led him to seek the sea. It is said Hugh Miller remembered that when a child not three years old he went into the garden one day, and saw there "a minute duckling, covered with soft, yellow hair, growing out of the soil by its feet, and beside it a plant that bore as its flowers a crop of little mussel-shells of a deep red color.” This really belonged to the vegetable kingdom; and the discriminating observation of a new fact in nature by one so young seemed prophetic of the future man of science.

Nothing remarkable of this kind is recorded of Admiral Foote's childhood. The sea is a magnet that draws its own to it wherever they may be. The plowboy on the hill-side or on the prairie far away hears in his mind's inner sense the perpetual undertone of ocean, and drops the plow, and makes his way to the coast to embark upon the adventurous life of the sailor. The love of the sea is one of those instincts that are original in the nature of some. This only is to be said of our hero's youth, that his earliest recollections were of ships. His father, when he lived in New Haven, was engaged in the West India trade, and his place of business was upon the well-known quay called "Long Wharf." For the first ten years of his married life his father was, as he himself supposed, subject to an affection of the lungs, and occasionally made a voyage to the West Indies, in the capacity of supercargo of one of his own vessels. As these absences were infrequent, the going and coming produced a strong impression upon the imagination of his children, as they watched the departing or returning sail, and probably awoke in one of them at least the vague and wild desires after a sailor's life.

It is also not altogether improbable that the war of 1812,

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