People's Pilot, Volume 4, Number 15, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 September 1894 — A POSSIBLE FUTURE. [ARTICLE]

A POSSIBLE FUTURE.

Admiral Farragut’* Excellent Flan—One Well Worth Imitating. Admiral Farragut acted always on the principle that any knowledge might at some time become useful, and he never lost an opportunity of learning something, from everybody, wherever he happened to be, especially if it were in a line with his own peculiai talents. Detailed for service at Now Haven, when a young man, he improved the occasion to attend the Yale lectures, and twenty-five years later, when called to Washington to draw up a book of regulations for the navy, he regularly attended the lectures at Smithsonian institution. “You will never come away,” he declared, “with l out being wiser than when you went in.” In the same way, when at Vera Cruz, though ho did not at the time look forward to n war with Mexico, he closely examined every point of interest; “for,” said he, “I have made it a rule of my life to note these things with a view to the possible future.” Even after tho war, when his reputation was at its height, in visiting European ports he never, for a moment, lost sight of this duty of professional acquirement. Not a harbor was visited that he did not observe critically its chances for defense by land or sea. “Who knows,” he would ask, “but my services may be needed her* some day?” His latest biographer cites in comparison the reply of the earl of St. Vincent, formerly known as Capt. Jervis, to his secretary, when the earl was planning an attack upon Brest: “Ah, Mr. Tucker, had Capt Jervis surveyed Brest when he visited it in 1774, in 1800 Lord St. Vincent would not have been in want of information.”—American Agriculturist.