Читать книгу Matthew Fontaine Maury, the Pathfinder of the Seas онлайн

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A better education than that afforded in these country elementary schools was, however, destined for Maury. When he was in his twelfth year, a dangerous fall from a tree so injured his back as to cause his father to consider it unwise for the lad to continue to work on the farm. He had already shown such aptitude for study that it was decided to send him to Harpeth Academy, then located about two miles from Franklin. In this school, Maury had as teachers the Reverend Doctor Blackburn, afterwards Chaplain to Congress; James Otey, who became the first Bishop of Tennessee; and William C. Hasbrouck, who was afterwards a distinguished lawyer in his native state, New York. The impression that Maury made upon these scholarly men was a very favorable and lasting one, and he retained their warm personal friendship as long as they lived.

It was with Dr. Blackburn that Maury began the study of Latin grammar, through which he marched with seven league boots in only seven days; this, of course, was a record for the school. Though he thus showed a capacity for learning languages, both at this time and later in the navy while on foreign stations, yet the field of science held the greatest attraction for Maury. His ambition to become a mathematician was aroused in a curious way. “The first man of science I ever saw in my infant days in the West”, he said, “was a shoemaker—old Mr. Neil. He was a mathematician; he worked out his problems with his awl on leather, and would send home his shoes with their soles covered with little x’s and y’s. The example of that man first awakened in my breast the young spirit of emulation; for my earliest recollections of the feelings of ambition are connected with the aspiration to emulate that man in mathematics”. The ambition to know and achieve early displayed itself in Maury, and in later life he pleasantly recalled to mind his “Tennessee school days when the air was filled with castles”.