FOLEY OF KENTUCKY 119 



woman, was our housekeeper, an efficient matron of the young 

 men who lodged in the hall, marvellously bitter of tongue, but 

 full of motherly goodness. This couple interested me greatly, 

 and we became near friends. I am sorry to say that they did 

 not find favor with the other youngsters ; so they fared ill, their 

 life being made a burthen by certain reprobates of the rather 

 ill-conditioned society. 



Of the students who were with Agassiz, few of them became 

 my friends, though I kept on good enough terms with all of 

 them. At first, I was intimately associated with one of them 

 from my part of Kentucky, whom I had known a bit in boy- 

 hood. So we naturally came at once together for the months 

 before the club was set up in the Hall. We spent our evenings 

 together, alternating in each other's rooms. Foley being by 

 two or three years my elder and a masterful man, a while he 

 was the leader of our doings. He was the most perfect speci- 

 men of a physical man I have ever known : six feet, two inches 

 high, evenly built, weighing about two hundred pounds, and 

 as nimble as a cat. After the manner of his Kentucky kind, he 

 was a born fighter, rejoicing in battle in a most amicable way 

 - whacking seemed to warm his heart. The memory of him 

 always reminds me of somebody's picture of a gentleman in 

 line of battle : 



And now he hummed a snatch of song : and now he smote a knave. 



Foley bred about him an atmosphere of combat which led the 

 toughs of all the neighborhood to try their hands on him. Look- 

 ing one summer evening from my window, I saw him coming 

 up the street. As he passed through the hedge two men jumped 

 at him ; in a flash he had knocked them down ; straightway he 

 picked them up and threw them over the hedge into the street, 

 the whole process taking less than ten seconds. Then he came 

 up to my room as if nothing unusual had happened. To my 

 question as to who the chaps were, he said, " Dunno ; never saw 

 them before," and made no further reference to them. 



