PROFESSIONAL ASSISTANTS: LOSS OF HEALTH. 305 



Within three years, two other infant children were 

 taken from him by death. " Anxiety, watching, and 

 sorrow" had worn upon his health, and in the 

 autumn of 1822 repeated attacks of vertigo warned 

 him of the necessity of seeking some relief. He first 

 undertook a journey to West Point, having been ap- 

 pointed an official visitor to the military school. He 

 was on his way back when he received the appalling 

 intelligence of the death of his friend and youth- 

 ful colleague, one of the most brilliant young men 

 whom the country has produced, Alexander Metcalf 

 Fisher. 



We passed a night at Kingston, and at Poughkeepsie the 

 morning papers shocked us with the news of the wreck of 

 the Albion a New York packet-ship in a tempest on 

 the rock-bound coast of Old Kinsale in Ireland, with the 

 loss of all her cabin passengers, except one, and among the 

 lost was our Professor Fisher of Yale College, who was on 

 his way to Europe for improvement. More than forty pas- 

 sengers were drowned, besides numbers of the people of 

 the ship ; and her commander, Captain Williams, was among 

 them. Her spars and topsails being blown away, she could 

 not be kept off from the shore. 



Mr. Fisher perished at the age of twenty-six, and his 

 attainments and merits placed him among the very first 

 young men in the land. My companions being devout men, 

 we all kneeled in our chamber in an act of devotion, lie- 

 signed indeed we were, but deeply afflicted by this most 

 unexpected event. The disaster might probably have been 

 averted had the ship tacked and stood out to sea until 

 the southeast gale abated. In April 1805, the Ontario, 

 in which I was a passenger for Liverpool, was caught in a 

 southeast gale in the same part of the channel, and she 

 tacked in time to escape being driven upon those terrible 



