98 Rhodora [JUNE 
of age. The daily routine of the Post was familiar to me, the reveille, 
guard mounting, hour calls, parade, gun fire, drills of all kinds, tattoo 
and taps. I was acquainted with the minutiae of the Academy, as a 
child would observe." This, with his short military service mentioned 
later, accounts for the intense military ardor that he always showed, 
and his deep love for West Point. 
A terrible tragedy came into Bailey’s life when he was but nine 
years of age and he never entirely recovered from its effects. On 
July 28, 1852, he embarked with his father, mother, and only sister, 
a young girl of sixteen, on board the Henry Clay, on the Hudson River, 
near West Point, for Long Island. The weather was bright and warm, 
and they had proceeded as far as Yonkers when the cry of “Fire!” 
was heard. Space forbids details. The fire was amidships. The 
steamer was beached near Yonkers and the passengers forward could 
escape, but the retreat of Prof. Bailey and his family was cut off. 
They all finally sprang into the water and in spite of every effort Mrs. 
Bailey and her daughter were drowned, Professor Bailey and his son 
were saved. From the shock there received young Bailey’s life 
trembled in the balance for several years, and his whole life and nature 
were profoundly affected by the calamity. Long after he writes, 
“After the dread event and consequent shock I never regained my 
original tone.” Indeed all the events of his future life were dominated 
by his weak constitution. 
In February, 1857, but a few days before his father’s death, he left 
West Point and went to Providence which was the residence of his 
uncle and where some of his ancestors had lived for several genera- 
tions. He entered the University Grammar School and in 1860 
became a freshman at Brown University in the same city. Having a 
profound distaste for mathematics and finding great difficulty with 
the subject he drifted into a special chemical course and left college 
with his class, but without a degree. 
It was during his college career, in 1862, at the time of the Civil War 
that he enlisted as a private in the Tenth Regiment of Rhode Island 
Volunteers for three months. His health broke down under the 
exposure, and he returned to Providence before the regiment. From 
time to time after graduation Bailey visited, at Fredericton, New 
Brunswick, his brother, Professor Loring W. Bailey, who held the 
chair of Chemistry and Natural Science in the University of New 
Brunswick in that city, and on several occasions he assumed his 
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