The united opinion. [volume] (Bradford, Vt.) 1881-1970, 1899-06-30
Dewey's Boyhood.

| ~"SJ 1OJA1OO0S
George Dewey, Admiral of the United
States Navy and idol of his country, was
probably the most widely known boy of
the century. Not day passes but a hun
dred or more men come reluctantly to
the front, and, with modesty and hesitant
demeanor, admit that they went to
school with Dewey. Those who did not
go to school with him lived next door to
him. Do these men realize how they are
taxing the elasticity of the State of Yer.
mont? state has certain metes and
bounds, and is not like rubber overshoe.
You can sometimes squeeze number
foot into a number overshoe, but you
cannot put ten thousand men into space
suthcient for only five thousand, because
they are not telescopes or pie plates. By
the way, the tin pie plate is most re-
markably scientific anomaly. Take a
dozen tin pie plates all the same size, and
You can put one into the other, and the
one on top remains no. larger and no
smaller than the one on the bottom. This
IS problems that has long puzzled the
pest PAID savants OF the country. That
is the way it is about George Dewey's
schoolboy friends and college chums
| Either Vermont was much larger when
Dewey was boy, or men and boys took
up much less room than they do now.
Perhaps Vermont has shrunk so gradual
| ly since then that no one has noticed it.
/
covering this fact and writing about it
for the magazines.
There is not town in the country so
mean and small and despised that it has
not its share OF Dewey's schoolmates. 1t
is a well-known fact that the school Dew
ey patronized was the largest in the
world. There exists no photograph of the
schoOlhOuse but trustworthy architect,
who is greatly interested in the matter,
has reconstructed the school, basing his
calculations upon the number of men
who, as boys, occupied the room right
next to Dewey's. He has made sketch
of the building, based on these figures. 1t
is fourteen stories high, $50 feet long by
175 feet wide. 1t is estimated that Dew
ey occupied at the same time 1862 rooms
| to accommodate the boys who roomed
next to him, forseeing that some day he
would be great man. Besides this Dew
ey occupied 1923 rooms with room mates
who have since blushingly admitted the
fact. 1t is said that Dewey became fam
Gus that he might not disappoint. the
| friends of his bOyhood, who had so labO-
| riously and at great expense prepared
themselves to have been his schOOlmateS
when they grew old. This is valuable
| lesson for all boys to remember; be great,
and you will always have plenty of school
mates. There is no such spur to, future
greatness as to go to a large school where
| you are bound to have great many COM
panions. And another thing to remem-
Der is, always do a great many things
that will serve for future anecdotes. The
boy who does not do anecdotal things can
never expect, to be a successfully great
man. 1t was largely due to his anecdote
that Dewey sank the Spanish fleet in Ma
Mia Bay. When he stood on the bridge
of the Olympia he said to himself:
"Steady, George, there are all those an
ecdotes behind you. Do. not forget that
you had schoolmates." Then, aided by
the war correspondents, he went IN ana
won the fight before and after breakfast,
thus showing that he remembered his
youthful training and his commendable
habit of preparing anecdotes as he went
along.
When a man becomes great enterpris-
ing editors, knowing that he has prepared
large number of anecdotes IN his youth |
and distributed them around among his |
family and SchoolmateS, send out and |
gather them in. II happens very often
that they do not have to send out, One
by one the men to whom the anecdotes
were intrusted remember their response
bility and bring them in to the editor.
Sometimes the anecdotes get into circu,-
latlon by the drawing out of an old
schoolmate whes he drops into the store
of an evening. When he sits sastFadle of
the sugar barrea and <ssts evaporated
peaches he can gradually be persuaded to
confess that he went to school with Dew
ey at Montpelier or Pomfret or Chitten-
den or johnson or Rutland or Northfeld
or Bellows Falls, wherever he happened
to be from. a greaimany are discovered
in that way. Sometimes the wife OF
schoOlmate writes her husbands reminis-
cences of Dewey andsends them to The
Ladies' Own Compassion"
Vermont used to have a remarkable
population. OF late years it has mySter-
iouslg fallen off. and tile reason has only
recently been suspected, Dewey's school
mat es have moved out vest. The density
of the population in Vermont is now only
1874 to the square mile, and there's plenty
of room to breathe. Before Dewey's
schoolmates moved away it used to be like
a crowd in front of a newspaper office on
the night of prize fight,
Yes" said Eleazer Polk, 81 remember
George well | always call him George,
you know. | got letter from him not |
long ago, written just twenty-eight min
ules before he went into action at Vanil-
ly. I'd show you the letter, but my wife |
lent it to the neighbOrS and It got passed |
around until it was wore out and never
come back. | mind George we'll. used |
to room next to him when he went to |
school at Paddlebury. He was not much
for style in them days. He knew he was
going to be admiral some day and used to
dress the part. He was small, peckled |
boy with yellow hair and used to make up |
to the gals right smart. The gals all liked |
him, too, because they knew he was going |
to be great man some day. My, but he |
was full of pranks. was George! always |
call him George. Ny. nv | mind once |
he played trick on teacher. One night |
he carried COW up into the belfry of the |
school and tied her with the bell-rope and |
she rung the bell all night and made the
folks think there was ghost up there so
that they dassen't 60 near the school Ill =
til morning. Gracious me, but George |
was great bow! But he was timd boy |
and wouldn't fight, that's why Pm so sur
prised that he fit them Spaniards so hard |
at Vanity Bay. l always call him George |
Just can't help it. Ny, but I'd like to
see George right this minute. Mr.. Polk |
now lives at Stotenburg, Ind. His valua
BILE addition to Deweyiana will appear in
book form later.
"George Dewey! Did know George?
Well, reckon did," said Laburnum Ii
tus of Crooked Creek, Kan. ''When l
knew him | roomed next door to him at
the Bellows Falls Academy He was
short fellow, with black hair, and he could
fight like the devil. | mind once a big
fellow from ROebottom Corners stepped
on Georges foot and told him he was no
sailor. George was mighty proud in them