805,
are no more than justice to Paul Jones.

"How old," Napoleon asked, "was Paul Jones when he died?"

On being told that Jones was forty-five years old at the time of his
death, Napoleon said:--

"Then he did not fulfill his destiny. Had he lived to this time, France
might have had an admiral."

Paul Jones has been called by his friends patriot, and by his enemies
pirate. In reality he was neither. He was not one of those deeply
ethical natures that subordinate personal glory and success to the
common good. As an American he cannot be ranked with his great
contemporaries, for his patriotism consisted merely in being fair and
devoted to the side he had for the time espoused rather than in quiet
work as a citizen after the spectacular opportunity had passed. He was
ready to serve wherever he saw the best chance for himself, whether it
was with the United States, Russia, or France. In no unworthy sense of
the word, however, was he an adventurer. The deepest thing in his soul,
the love of glory, rendered him incapable at once of meanness and of
true patriotism. In search for fame he gave up family, friends, and
religion. In these relations of life he would have been and was, as far
as he went, tolerant and kind; but in them he was not interested. Love
of glory made him a lonely figure. It rendered him a _poseur_, vain and
snobbish, but it also spurred him on to contend, with phenomenal energy,
against almost innumerable difficulties.

As far as his deeds are concerned, Paul Jones appears in the popular
consciousness as he really was,--a bolt of effectiveness, a desperate,
successful fighter, a sea captain whose habit was to appear unexpectedly
to confound his enemies, and then to disappear, no one knew where, only
to reappear with telling effect. He has been the hero of the novelists,
who, expressing the popular idea, have pictured him with essential
truth. A popular hero, indeed, he was, and will remain so, justly, in
the memory of men.

* * * * *

The Riverside Press

_Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Co._

_Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A._

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