HIS EARLY YEARS 5 



came the first Bishop of Tennessee; and William C. 

 Hasbrouck, who was afterwards a distinguished lawyer 

 in his native state, New York. The impression that 

 Maury made upon these scholarly men was a very 

 favorable and lasting one, and he retained their warm 

 personal friendship as long as they lived. 



It was with Dr. Blackburn that Maury began the 

 study of Latin grammar, through which he marched with 

 seven league boots in only seven days; this, of course, 

 was a record for the school. Though he thus showed a 

 capacity for learning languages, both at this time and 

 later in the navy while on foreign stations, yet the field 

 of science held the greatest attraction for Maury. Flis 

 ambition to become a mathematician w^as aroused in a 

 curious way. ''The first man of science I ever saw in 

 my infant days in the West", he said, 'Svas a shoemaker 

 — old Mr. Neil. He was a mathematician; he worked 

 out his problems with his awl on leather, and would send 

 home his shoes with their soles covered with little x's 

 and y's. The example of that man first awakened in 

 my breast the young spirit of emulation ; for my earliest 

 recollections of the feelings of ambition are connected 

 with the aspiration to emulate that m.an in mathe- 

 matics". The ambition to know and achieve early 

 displayed itself in Maury, and in later life he pleasantly 

 recalled to mind his ''Tennessee school days when the air 

 was filled with castles". 



Such, in brief, was the life of Maury as a lad in his 

 adopted state, — a state which he came to love and to 

 which he referred years afterwards, when he had trav- 

 eled extensively and become a famous man, as "the 

 loveliest of lands" and "the finest country I have ever 

 seen". Here he was nurtured with the best the frontier 



