Perhaps there are many of our young readers who do not know the history
of that brave young officer who, one of the very first to fall in the
late war, was killed at Great Bethel, Virginia, June 10, 1861. He was
born at New Haven, Connecticut, in September, 1828. He was a studious
and quiet boy, and not very robust. From early youth he had determined
to become an author worthy of fame, but he tore himself away from his
beloved work at the call of his country just as he was about to win
that fame, leaving behind him a number of finished and unfinished
writings, most of which were afterward published.

He could handle oars as well as write of them, could skate like his
hero in "Love and Skates," and was good at all manly sports. He
traveled much, visited Europe twice, lived two years at the Isthmus of
Panama, and returning from there across the plains (an adventurous trip
at that time), learned in those far western wilds to manage and
understand the half-tamed horses and untamed savages about whom he
writes so well. This varied experience gave a freedom and power to his
pen that the readers of the ST. NICHOLAS are not too young to perceive
and appreciate.]



Almost sunset. I pulled my boat's head round, and made for home.

I had been floating with the tide, drifting athwart the long shadows
under the western bank, shooting across the whirls and eddies of the
rapid strait, grappling to one and another of the good-natured sloops
and schooners that swept along the highway to the great city, near at
hand.