The Montgomery advertiser., 1908-08-18

much ado about 1t for him. Naval
 officers win call on him and the Presl- ! dent will probably write him letter congratulating him upon his service
 to his country, but the eighty million | hearts at home and countless millions
 abroad will go with. him as he formaily | quits the service of the United states navy. For be 1t said that there never | was sailor who more fully emoooieo | all the traditions of the sea in ms
 makeup. nor who served his country | with more distinction and more brav- cry than Fighting Bob'' Evans. Upon one occasion Rudyard Kipling | presented Evans with some of his | books. In the f1y-leaf of one he wrote
 poem to, the sea captain. TWO
 stanzas ran like this.
 | "zogbaum draws with a pencil.
 And I do things with a pen
 But you sit up in coming tower. Bossing eight hundred men.
 ITO him that hath shall be given. And that's why these books are sent To the man who has lived more stories
 Than Zogbaum or could invent" Evans has indeed "lived' many
 stories. His life is a romance. In ms
 sixty-two years he has probably sailed AAAOIc SCh1t tuCL AuOfC PCOPACy hO0 strange experiences. and met more
 close calls for his life than any other official in the American navy. But whether lying dangerously wounded In a watery pit before Fort Fisher, or entereaining the German Emperor in a way that made the Kaiser his ire long friend. or handling a delicate sit- uation in Chilli, or assisting In the upbuilding of the American navy or tax
 ing gallant part in theS panish- -Ameri-
 can war. or sitting up in his coming tower Tossing" twenty thousand of the best Jack
 tars who ever went to sea, whatever he has done has been done in a way
 every whit worthy of the best tra- ditions of American and her navy. His recent career Is familiar his- tory. His eight years of service as flag officer have been brilliant, but Congress has allowed him to retire with no promotion for 1t all. How he
 commanded the Atlantic fleet for sev-
 eral years, how he got 1t in shlp-snape
 for the greatest globe-girdllng cruise
 ever undertaken by any navy, how ne
 piloted that fleet through the danger
 ous narrows of Magellan is not to be
 soon forgotten. neither is his surrend-
 CT of the command of that meet with
 its attendant ceremonies.
 No commander ever bade farewell to
 his men under more spectacular, more
 pathetic, and yet more fitting circum-
 stances than Evans did at San Fran
 cisco. It was a blaze of glory Witn
 which San Francisco welcomed the
 fleet and Evans said goodby to 1t. The
 guard of horror on that occasion was
 composed of the cadets of the Salt
 Lake High School, where he had been
 a student more than fifty years before.
 Pathos attended the ceremonies for the
 gallant old Admiral had to live down
 a thousand pains to be present, and at
 that moment unknown to him, his
 little grandson, the very apple of his
 eye and the hope of his declining
 years, lay dead in Washington.
 Admiral Evans was born in Floyd
 country Virginia, August IS, 1S46. Ills father was country doctor and serv-
 ed his country in the State legislature
 He says that his first recollection Of himself Is when he was about four years old He was sturdy in health, had rather long, light-colored curls, and wore a velvet suit, with a feather in his cap for ornament His first possession was a gun. a pony and negro boy, who taught him how to smoke and chew tobacco. He had black nanny" as had all Virginia children of quality in those days. This old woman lived to be 102 years old, and died in Washington a few years ago. Tn his early youth he. frequently accompanied his fathers teamsters to Lynchburg. and he has said that he never tasted such corn bread as they had in those days, since no such corn meal is now made His usual wants when he got to Lynchburg were pair of high. red-top boots and some ann munition. The harvest time was the brightest of his childish experiences. His duty was to gather the eggs of the Bob Whites" whose nests were broken up by the harvesters. He would take a basket lined with raw cotton and gather the eggs into this. One day he gathered l20 partridge eggs, and had a hen hatch them out. He succeeded in raising nearly the whole brood.
 The father of young Evans died when he was ten years of age, leav- ing him as the head of the house. His mother soon moved to Fairfax county, just out of Washington, so that he could get the better school advantages. He admits that he cannot remember school, and little more at the Fairfax schools In 1857 his uncle. A. H. Evans, had him come to Washington and live at his home. This uncle was a lawyer and was clerk to the House Committee on Claims. He started to the public school. but his career was sh ort. He had made a Jack-knife boat. and was sailing it on a pool at the schoolgrounds. A big boy came along and with a stone smashed the little navy of the budding admiral. It was Evans turn next to throw a stone and he did 1t with such precision and dispatch that the other boy was carried home on a door. This ended the career of young Evans in the pub lie schools. He next went to Con- zaga College, and there completed his school days in civil life.
 Much of his time in those days was spent playing about the Capitol and wasn't there he was down at the water He had about made up his mind to run away to sea when a Mir. Hooper dele gate in Congress from Utah, asked him if he would go to the Naval Acad- emy on his appointment. He accepted the offer. went to Utah to stay year for the purpose of acquiring a legal residence. and then came back to An napolis. On his way to Utah he had all his worldly belongings in an old fashioned carpet bag. At Davis. Mo, and old man swapped bags with him by mistake and he raised money to supply his loss by auctioning off the | contents of the bag left him. He join ed an emigrant party at St. Joseph and | rode a Mexican mule which, he says, could smell an Indian farther and get | away faster than any beast he has | ever seen. Once he was shot by the Indians, the arrow going through the leather fender over his stirrup first, |