t men are always prone to rely upon instruments rather
than upon living agents--to think the armor greater than the man.

The self-confidence which Farragut exhibited in his military
undertakings was not only a natural trait; it rested also upon a
reasonable conviction of his mastery of his profession, resulting from
long years of exclusive and sustained devotion. He did not carry the
same feeling into other matters with which he had no familiarity; and he
was jealously careful not to hazard the good name, which was the honor
of his country as well as of himself, by attaching it to enterprises
whose character he did not understand, or to duties for which he did not
feel fitted. Accordingly, he refused a request made to him to allow his
name to be used as director of a company, accompanied by an intimation
that stock representing one hundred thousand dollars had been placed in
his name on the books. "I have determined," he replied, "to decline
entering into any business which I have neither the time nor perhaps the
ability to attend to." In like manner he refused to allow his name to be
proposed for nomination as a presidential candidate. "My entire life has
been spent in the navy; by a steady perseverance and devotion to it I
have been favored with success in my profession, and to risk that
reputation by entering a new career at my advanced age, and that career
one of which I have little or no knowledge, is more than any one has a
right to expect of me."

Farragut was essentially and unaffectedly a religious man. The
thoughtfulness and care with which he prepared for his greater
undertakings, the courage and fixed determination to succeed with which
he went into battle, were tempered and graced by a profound submission
to the Almighty will. Though not obtruded on the public, his home
letters evince how constantly the sense of this dependence was present
to his thoughts; and he has left on record that, in the moment of
greatest danger to his career, his spirit turned instinctively to God
before gathering up its energies into that sublime impulse, whose
lustre, as the years go by, will more and more outshine his other deeds
as the crowning glory of them all--when the fiery admiral rallied his
staggered column, and led it past the hostile guns and the lost Tecumseh
into the harbor of Mobile.

INDEX.

Anecdotes of Admiral Farragut, 11, 12, 22, 26, 35, 45-49, 58, 92,
112, 124, 168-170, 267, 281, 286, 288, 2