Dr. Dewey wished to give George a career in the army, and he sent him to Norwich University, a military training school, in order to fit him for the Military Academy at West Point.  George’s tastes, however, were for the navy, and after much pleading with his father he brought him to his way of thinking.  The utmost that Dr. Dewey could do was to secure the appointment of his son as alternate, who, as may be understood, secures the appointment only in the event of the principal failing to pass the entrance examination.  In this case the principal would have passed without trouble, and, to quote an ordinary expression, George Dewey would have been “left,” had not the mother of the other boy interposed at the critical moment.  Under no circumstances would she allow her son to enter the navy.  He was compelled to give up all ambition in that direction and to take up the study of theology.  At this writing he is a popular preacher, who will always believe it was a most providential thing for our country that turned him aside from blocking the entrance of George Dewey to the Naval Academy at Annapolis.

Our hero entered the institution September 23, 1854.  It did not take him long to discover that the institution, like that at West Point, is controlled by the most rigid discipline possible.  No stricter rules can be devised than those that prevail at the two institutions.  I have heard it said by a West Point graduate that a cadet cannot sit down and breathe for twenty-four hours without violating some rule.  The fact that a few men do escape being “skinned”—­that is, punished for derelictions of duty—­does not prove that they have not committed any indiscretions, but that they have escaped detection.

Hard, however, as was the road for Dewey to travel, he never shrank or turned aside, for he knew the same path had been traveled by all who had gone before him, and he reasoned that what man had done man could do, and he did it.

It will be noted that the future Admiral entered the Naval Academy at a stirring period in the history of our country, over which the coming Civil War already cast its awful shadow, and, as the months and years passed, the shadow darkened and grew more portentous until the red lightning rent the clouds apart and they rained blood and fire and woe and death.

At the Annapolis Academy the lines between the cadets from the North and the South were sharply drawn.  They reflected the passions of their sections, and, being young and impulsive, there were hot words and fierce blows.  As might be supposed, George Dewey was prominent in these affrays, for it has been said of him that there was never a fight in his neighborhood without his getting into the thickest of it.

One day a fiery Southerner called him a dough-face, whereupon Dewey let go straight from the shoulder and his insulter turned a backward somersault.  Leaping to his feet, his face aflame with rage, he went at the Green Mountain Boy, who coolly awaited his attack, and they proceeded instantly to mix it up for some fifteen minutes in the most lively manner conceivable.  At the end of that time the Southerner was so thoroughly trounced that he was unable to continue the fight.