it; he had seen men, writhing in
the agony of death, expend their last breath to defend it. It had
wrapped itself about his heart, and meant more to him than home or
friends or kindred. So the flag won.

On the seventeenth day of April, 1861, Virginia seceded from the Union.
The day following, our gray-haired captain, expressing the opinion that
secession was not the will of the majority of the people, but that the
state had been dragooned out of the Union by a coterie of politicians,
was told that he could no longer live in Norfolk.

"Very well," he answered, "I can live somewhere else."

He went home and told his wife that the time had come when she must
choose whether she would remain with her own kinsfolk or follow him. Her
choice was made on the instant, and within two hours, David Glasgow
Farragut, his wife and their only son, were on a steamer headed for the
North. A few days later, he offered his services to the Union.

Before going forward with him upon his great career, let us cast a
glance over his boyhood--such a boyhood as falls to the lot of not one
in a million. Born in 1801, of a father who had served in the Revolution
and who was afterwards to become a friend and companion of Andrew
Jackson, his childhood was passed amid the dangers and alarms of the
Tennessee frontier. In 1808 occurred the incident which paved the way
for his entrance into the navy. While fishing on Lake Pontchartrain, his
father fell in with a boat in which was lying an old man prostrated by
the heat of the sun. Farragut took him at once to his own home, where he
was tenderly cared for, but he died a few days later. The sufferer was
David Porter, father of Captain Porter of the Essex, at that time in
charge of the naval station at New Orleans.

Captain Porter was informed of the accident to his father, and hastened
to the home of the Farraguts. He felt deeply their kindness, and as some
slight return, offered to adopt one of the Farragut children, take him
North with him, and do what he could for his advancement. Young David
promptly said that he would go, the arrangements were concluded, and the
boy of seven accompanied his new protector to Washington. He spent two
years at school there, and then, on December 17, 1810, at the age of
nine, received an appointment as midshipman in the United States navy.
Two years later, he accompanied Porter in the Essex on that memorable
trip around Cape Horn.

Porter took so many prizes in the