120 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SEALER 



Beginning with the occupancy of Zoological Hall as a club- 

 house, Foley was for some months my chum. We got on well 

 together. He tried his best to take on studious ways and showed 

 no little ability, so that the master had great hopes for his 

 future, but fighting and what goes with it was too much 

 for him. Some of his feats were in their time famous. One mid- 

 night he came home with a policeman's coat and billy under 

 his arm. A huge member of the force known as the "Infant 

 Hayes" had tried to arrest him, merely to be laid down and 

 stripped of his uniform and club, which were returned the next 

 day with Foley's compliments and address. Naturally, the 

 vanquished giant held his peace. About the same time, coming 

 out from Boston on the well-remembered "last car" of those 

 days, he was set upon by a party of roughs ; he kicked them off, 

 and not liking the behavior of the conductor and driver he 

 kicked them off also. He then drove the car to the stables, ex- 

 plaining that the men had stopped in the "Port" and would be 

 up shortly. As my chum was never ill-humored or unfair, and 

 especially as he was never vanquished, he became a privileged 

 character, the idol of the gentlemanly and other villains of 

 eastern Massachusetts. In six months I found the association 

 unprofitable ; so in all friendliness we dissolved partnership and 

 he lodged elsewhere. At the end of the year, he left the School, 

 to become afterward a distinguished officer of cavalry in the 

 Union service. He stays in my memory as the best type of his 

 class I have ever known. 



My next chum was Alpheus Hyatt of Maryland, a man of dif- 

 ferent quality from Foley. He, too, was much my senior, and 

 had a large place in my life. Although my experiences had been 

 wider than his, he earlier developed maturity of mind; in fact, 

 at nineteen I looked up to him, then about twenty-two, as an 

 ancient. He had attained to a perfectly definite theory of life, 

 while I was still an explorer. I well remember his arraignment 

 of me as a dreamer and a vagarist who would drift through life 

 doing what the moment bade me do, with no sense of a definite 



