108 HALL OF FAME MEN. 



about 1700. My record goes no further than this, so that I do 

 not know what Captain Marshall's rank was. Colonel Marshall 

 was a well-educated person, had one of the finest libraries in Vir- 

 ginia, and gave a great deal of his personal time and attention to 

 the education and training of his son John. Colonel Marshall's 

 education was self-acquired and consisted of a "good knowledge 

 of surveying, mathematics, astronomy, history, poetry and general 

 literature." It is very probable that his severest mental discipline 

 and exertions were in the years immediately preceding the birth 

 of his son John. His wife was Mary Keith, the sixth child of 

 Rev. James Keith and Mary Isham Randolph, a descendant of 

 William Randolph of Turkey Island. I do not have the records 

 of Mr. Keith nor his wife, though we know that she came from 

 a family which had previously acquired mental ability. 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. 



H. W. Longfellow, the other person having successive small 

 letters to characterize his ancestry, was born when his father 

 lacked twenty-six days of being thirty-one years old. Taken as 

 a whole, Longfellow's birth-rank is lower than that of any other 

 person in the list, but against this we have among his ancestors 

 no less than four graduates from Harvard College. From the 

 theory of use-inheritance this would imply that early mental activity 

 takes the place, in a measure, of many years of brain effort. That 

 it does not do so completely is readily seen by comparing Long- 

 fellow with any of the men who rank high from the birth stand- 

 point. While we may concede that Longfellow was a great poet, 

 such a concession does not imply that he is comparable in mental 

 endowments with a Franklin or a Webster. 



