own to the
midshipmen as Bull-pup, who I suppose had been a practical surveyor;
"that is what he does." I presume the denunciation was due to B. P.
having at one time borrowed an instrument from the department, and
returned it thus maltreated. But "practical," so misapplied--action
without thought--was Chauvenet's red rag.

An amusing reminiscence, illustrative of the same common tendency, was
told me by General Howard. I had the pleasure of meeting Howard, then
in command of one wing of Sherman's army, at Savannah, just after the
conclusion of the march to the sea, in 1864. He spoke pleasantly of
his associations with my father, when a cadet at the Military Academy,
and added, "I remember how he used to say, 'A little common-sense, Mr.
Howard, a little common-sense.'" Howard did not say what particular
occasions he then had in mind, but a student reciting, and confronted
suddenly with some question, or step in a demonstration, which he has
failed to master, or upon which he has not reflected, is apt to feel
that the practical thing to do is not to admit ignorance; to trust to
luck and answer at random. Such a one, explaining a drawing of a
bridge to my father, was asked by him what was represented by certain
lines, showing the up-stream part of a pier. Not knowing, he replied,
"That is a hole to catch the ice in." "Imagine," said my father, in
telling me the story, "catching all the ice from above in holes in the
piers." A little common-sense--exercised first, not afterwards--is the
prescription against leaping before you look, or jamming your screws
too hard.

To substitute acquired common-sense--knowledge and reflection--for the
cruder and tardier processes of learning by hard personal experience
and mistakes, is, of course, the object of all education; and it was
this which caused the foundation of the Naval Academy, behind which at
its beginning lay the initiative of some of the most reputed and
accomplished senior officers of the navy, conscious of the needless
difficulties they themselves had had to surmount in reaching the
level they had. It involved no detraction from their professional
excellence, the excellence of men professionally self-made; but none
comprehend the advantages of education better than candid men who have
made their way without it. By the time I entered, however, there had
been a decided, though not decisive, reaction in professional feeling.
Ten years had elapsed since the founding of the