Letter of the Rev. George B. Bacon.

403 ing the crew to a surrender of their grog-ration. Most of the ship's company agreed to it, after listening to the lively and well-put speech in which Foote stated the case to them just before we sailed from Norfolk. During the voyage out to China, I think no spirit-rations were served. But presently the discontent of a few broke up the plan, and before the cruise was finished the total abstinence had generally come to an end. The good effect of their captain's influence, however, was not lost upon the men. There was no mistaking the kindness and Christian faithfulness of his interest in their welfare, even if this special endeavor in behalf of temperance was partially defeated.

It was the cap

"So, too, with the religious services on shipboard. tain's custom to conduct these in person in the absence of a chaplainreading a part of the service from the Prayer-book of the Episcopal Church, and sometimes a printed sermon. Besides this, he would sometimes hold a more informal prayer-meeting on the berth-deck, at which the attendance was not compulsory; or he would gather the apprentice boys in a Sunday-school class, and attempt some simple instruction of them in religious truth. Always when in port he took pains to have his religious profession and endeavor understood. Knowing how often the influence of officers and men is not especially manifest on the side of Christian faith and charity, he went out of his way to show that his influence was not to be of that sort; so that the arrival of the Portsmouth was always as welcome, to say the least, to the missionary families of any port as to the mercantile or diplomatic community. He believed in showing his colors. When the Second King of Siam came down from Bangkok to visit the Portsmouth, he expressed some courteous surprise when Foote asked a blessing at the table as they sat down to dinner. He had supposed, his majesty intimated, that only missionary folk did that sort of thing. And he received some new light in regard to religious life in Christian lands when the admiral seized the opportunity to class himself among the missionary folk, and to identify their faith and their endeavors as his own. And so always and in all company, rather than have any thing doubtful or equivocal about his own position, he would make an opportunity to declare it. He never forgot his loyalty to Christ and to his Cross. And he was anxious, if it were possible, to be not only a Christian man, but a Christian officer-bringing his flag with him in his religious service, and making the nation which he represented to be known as not in name only, but in fact, a Christian nation. How successful he was, on one or two notable occasions, in accomplishing this

endeavor, the story of his life, as you have written it, will, I doubt not, abundantly show.

"It was partly his broad religious spirit which saved him from becoming a merely technical, routine officer, knowing his profession and knowing nothing else. It was as far as possible from such narrowness. His interest in letters, in science, in politics, was generous and intelligent. His interest in men was kind and thoughtful. In many ways, in little ways as well as in those more important, I was personally indebted to his thoughtfulness and care for me. The two years that I spent with him— the first as his clerk in intimate confidential relationship, the second as his purser―gave me the opportunity to know him thoroughly. The wider reputation which he acquired in the War of the Rebellion did not at all surprise me. I am sure that he would have proved equal to any opportunity which a longer life had brought to him. And his example seems to me one most worthy to be studied and to be followed. Brave, skillful, true—a good sailor, a good fighter, a good citizen, a good man -Christian in word and deed and life-the nation, for which he lived and died, needs only to know him better in order to love him more, and to honor his memory as among its choicest treasures.

"Most truly yours,

GEORGE B. BACON."

Toward the last of May, 1874, the writer of this biography met, by good fortune, Commodore Rodgers, Chief of Bureau of Docks and Yards, at the room of Secretary Robeson in Washington, D. C. The conversation turned upon Admiral Foote. "Foote," said Commodore Rodgers, "had more of the bull-dog than any man I ever knew. He did not, like some men, plan gallant deeds on his bed, and when the pinch came discover he was no hero; but when the fighting came, then he was in his element-he liked it. He had some charming foibles, which only endeared him the more to those who knew him; and among these he thought he was an orator, which he certainly was not. He was a man of acute nervous organization, which accounted for some of his impulsive acts. He was a man of deep religious principle, and was one in whom the government entirely confided, and on whom events: turned. He was a splendid naval officer. He was a typical man.”

Concluding Words.

405

Why need we add more words of friends or of our own? Our grateful task is finished. We have striven to give a plain and straightforward story, without exaggeration, without covering up flaws, and without keeping back hearty praise of noble qualities and great actions. Farragut, Foote, Dupont, Goldsborough, Dahlgren, the two Porters, Winslow, Wordenare not these worthy to take their place with the sea-captains of the earlier days of the republic—yes, with those ancient English worthies who, in their nimble little vessels, grappled with invincible tenacity the many-towered ships of the Spanish Armada, and saved England to freedom and the Protestant faith? In them all burned

"The unconquerable mind, and Freedom's holy flame."

In one of them, we know, burned a still purer and holier flame. No man, says Coleridge, can be in the highest sense a hero who is not a man of faith. It is the overpowering sense of God, of the greatness of the thought of him, of loyalty to his service, that dissipates littleness and selfish fear, raises the mind above material elements, and makes it truly heroic. The faith of a sailor is often one of peculiar power and depth. Where life itself is the price of constant watchfulness, of scrupulous order, of patient endurance, of unflinching obedience to one governing will, the grand law of duty is apt to be well learned in the school of old ocean. Where, too, the ship is alone on the sea, suspended over a mysterious abyss that stretches like a dim eternity before the eye, the thought of God, and dependence upon him, and final accountability to him, fills the religious mind; so that the man who spends much of his life at sea is often a man of strong faith.

And this same ocean, whose storms shake the world, also binds the world closely together. Through its waters pass those lines of national intercommunication which, though they vanish after the track of the ship's keel, are nevertheless the

viewless lines which knit the race of man into one brotherhood; and thus the ocean becomes the means of educating and increasing the love of man.

Duty to God-love to man-these were the words written on the colors which he sailed under, the simple and unadorned narrative of whose life has been given in these pages-and he never pulled down his flag.

Arkansas, fight with the gun-boat, 348, Canton merchants, letter of, 127.

Benton, the gun-boat, 165, 267, 268, 312, Colonization Society, lecture before the,

Boynton's "Civil History of the Navy," Constitution, the, 40.