who maintained that every officer
should be able to calculate mathematically the relation between
weights and purchases. But between 1855 and 1860, if such a tendency
existed in germ, it had no effect in practice. As I look back, the
relation between what we were taught and what we were to do was
neither remote nor indirect. In its own sphere, in both its merits and
its faults, the Academy was in aspiration as professional as the
outside service.

This means that the Academy constituted for us an atmosphere perfectly
accordant with the life for which we were intended; and an educational
institution has no educative function to discharge higher than this.
This influence was enhanced by the social customs, in favor of which
disciplinary exactions were relaxed to the utmost possible; herein
departing from the practice at the Military Academy, as then known to
me. Not only on Saturdays and holidays, but every day, and at all
hours not positively allotted to study or drills, the midshipmen might
visit the houses of officers or professors to which they had the
entrance. As a rule, very properly, no one was allowed to be absent
from mess; but permission could always be obtained to accept an
invitation to the evening meal with any of the families. This freedom
of intercourse contributed its share to the formation of professional
tone, for the heads of the families were selected professional men,
who were thus met on terms of intimacy, precluded elsewhere by the
official relations of the parties. More training is imparted by such
association than by teaching--the familiar contrast of example and
precept. An even greater gain, however--and a strictly professional
gain, too--was the social facility thus acquired. In all callings
probably, certainly in the navy, social aptitude is professionally
valuable. Nelson's dictum that naval officers should know how to dance
was only one way of saying that they should be men of affairs, at home
in all conditions where men--or women--gather for business or
amusement. The phrase "all sorts and conditions of men" never had
wider or juster application than to the assembly of green lads, from
every variety of parentage and previous surroundings, pitchforked into
Annapolis once every year; and, of all the humanizing and harmonizing
influences under which they came, none exceeded that of the quiet
gentlefolk, of modest means, with whom they mingled thus freely.
Indeed, one of the most astute of ou