Prophetic words from the man who was destined to fight just such a battle.

Paul Jones never sailed in a man-of-war whose quarter-deck was worthy of being trodden by his feet. His battles were won not by his ships, but by his genius. Employing the feeble vessels given him or which he himself procured, he sailed forth boldly to strike the enemies of his country's liberty wherever he could find them and paused not till he dipped the fringes of his banners in the home waters of the mistress of the seas. He captured some sixty vessels from the foremost of naval powers, made four bold descents upon the land, seized large quantities of arms and military stores, destroyed more than a million dollars' worth of property on the sea, and took hundreds of prisoners whose capture was used to force an exchange and release our men, who were being slowly tortured to death in the loathsome, pestilential prison hulks in Brooklyn. Congress afterwards thanked him by resolution for his bold and successful enterprises to redeem from captivity the citizens of these States who had fallen under the power of the enemy." He was the very personification of valor. He ranked courage as the manliest of human attributes. He loved brave men; he loathed cowards. He believed that there was scarcely a sin for which courage could not atone. He showed this trait in all the aphorisms he uttered, such as: "Boldness, not caution, wins"; "Men mean more than guns in the rating of ships"; "I am not calculating risks, but estimating the chances of success"; "The sources of success are quick resolve and swift stroke"; "Bravery is that cheerful kind of spirit that makes a man unable to believe that there is any such word as 'danger' in the dictionary, or, if so, not able to see why it should be there."

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As long as manly courage is talked of or heroic deeds are honored there will remain green in the hearts of brave men the talismanic name of Paul Jones.

The admiral had that tenderness of heart which is usually coupled with true courage. While he could resort to stern measures in enforcing discipline and suppressing mutiny, he governed his crew more by attaching them to him by kind acts and just treatment than by corporal punishment. Referring to his command of the Providence, he wrote: There was no cat-o'-nine tails aboard, because I threw the only one we had in the sea the first day out.

Again, he said:

I wish all my men to be contented and happy.

He was as generous as the sun itself. For a long time he bore all his personal expenses and abstained from presenting demands for pay to our poverty-stricken Government. When, in foreign seas, he found that the Government regulations did not authorize the pay the handbills of overzealous recruiting officers had promised to his sailors, he paid the difference out of his own pocket, so that his gallant crew should not feel that they were victims of a deception.

For one who lived in an age of loose morals and spent his youthful years amidst the temptations which then beset a seafaring man in the merchant service, he was singularly free from every form of dissipation. He had no fondness for revelry, jolly coffee-house dinners, or drinking bouts, which formed the principal amusements in foreign ports. While others were carousing ashore he was studying in his cabin, perfecting himself in history and languages, pondering upon the maneuvering of ships and the grand strategy of naval warfare, and paving the way for his future victories, which were won first with the brain, then with the sword.

Among his closest friends and most ardent admirers were Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, La Fayette, Hamilton, Wayne, Livingston, the two Morrises, and other eminent Americans. Not bad companionship for a "pirate."

Notwithstanding the gravity of his nature, he at times displayed a wit that could cut the sting from the keenest criticism and gild disappointment with a pleasantry.

He fashioned epigrams in prose and poetry.

Mrs. Livingston, in speaking of him in her diary as a conversationalist, said:

He by turns delighted, amazed, and mystified us.

The Dutchess de Chartres wrote:

Not Bayard or Charles le Téméraire could have laid his helmet at a lady's feet with such knightly dignity.

The Marquis de Vaudreuil, the French admiral with whom Paul Jones once made a voyage, said:

His talents are so wonderful and of such diversity that each day he brings forth some new proof of cleverness.

Franklin spoke of the "strange magnetism of his presence, the indescribable charm of his manner."

His criticisms and retorts were at times so caustic that they made him enemies. When Mr. Adams, at a reception in Philadelphia, attempted to relate an anecdote of Fontenelle in French, Paul Jones, upon being asked by some friends what he thought of Mr. Adams's French, replied, without reflecting that the remark might be repeated:

If the political sentiments of Mr. Adams were as English as his French, he would be easily the greatest Tory in the land.

This came to the ears of Mr. Adams, and it was long before he forgave the Admiral for the criticism.

But his heart was not often attuned to mirth; its chords were frequently set to strains of sadness. For years he was engaged in a struggle against insubordination, treachery, jealousy, neglect at home, and abuse abroad. The people against whom he fought opened their floodgates of calumny. No misrepresentation of his acts was too gross, no distortion of history too monstrous. These well-concerted attacks of the pen were intended to set him before the Old World in an aspect that was a vicious caricature of his true nature, and they even gave so erroneous an impression of him in this country that it has required a century of time to correct it.

He was too actively engaged in making current history to spare much time in reading it, but he was once moved to write of his enemies:

One may often correctly gauge one's merits by the virulence of their abuse.

He had to learn that "Reproach is a concomitant to greatness, as satire and invective were an essential part of a Roman triumph," and that in public life all arrows wound, the last one kills. He lived to realize that success is like sunshine, it brings out the vipers, and that the laurel is a narcotic that prevents others from sleeping.

Worn out with the fatigues of arduous service, at the untimely age of 45, alone in a foreign land, he surrendered to death, the only foe to whom he ever lowered his colors. By some strange and unaccountable fatality he was covered immediately with the mantle of forgetfulness. In all the annals of history there is not another case in which death has caused the memory of so conspicuous a man to drop at once from the height of prominence to the depth of oblivion.

He had been counted as one of the rarest contributions to earth's contingent of master spirits. He enjoyed the unique distinction of being

the first to hoist the present form of our flag upon an American man-ofwar, the first to receive a salute to it from a foreign power, the first to raise it upon a hostile war ship of superior strength captured in battle, and under his command that banner was never once dethroned from its

proud supremacy. He is the only commander in history who ever landed an American force upon a European coast.

Congress complimented him by a resolution, voted him a medal to commemorate his greatest victory, and awarded him the privilege of the floor of both Houses; he received a similar favor from the Constitutional Convention; the people of this and other lands organized public demonstrations in his honor; France knighted him, Louis XVI presented him with a gold-mounted sword, Denmark pensioned him, Catharine of Russia created him an admiral, conferred upon him imperial decorations, and loaded him with marks of distinction. If he had lived a little longer, he would in all probability have been named admiral of France. The rugged sailor had compelled the recognition of genius; the Scottish peasant boy had broken down the barriers of caste.

In life he was perhaps the most conspicuous personage on two continents, and yet the moment he was placed beneath the ground some strange fate seemed to decree that he was to be snatched from history and relegated to fiction. No inscription was engraved upon his coffin, no statue was erected in his honor, no ship was given his name, no public building was called after him. It required six years of research to find the apartment in which he had lived in Paris and held his brilliant salons, which were attended by the foremost celebrities of the period, and as long a time to discover his unmarked and forgotten grave.

When finally his exact place of burial had been definitely located by authentic documents and other positive evidence, the ground exhibited so repulsive an appearance that the aspect was painful beyond expression. There was presented the spectacle of a hero who had once been the idol of the American people lying for more than a century, like an obscure outcast, in an abandoned cemetery which had been covered later by a dump pile to a height of 15 feet, where dogs and horses had been buried, and the soil was soaked with polluted waters from undrained laundries. As busy feet tramped over the ground, the spirit of the hero who lay beneath might well have been moved to cry, in the words of the motto on his first flag, not in defiance, but in supplication then, "Don't

tread on me.' No American citizen, upon contemplating on the spot those painful circumstances, could have shrunk from an attempt to secure for his remains a more deserving sepulcher.

When the body was exhumed, it was fortunately found perfectly preserved, with all the flesh intact, in consequence of having been buried in a leaden coffin filled with alcohol-the usual method of embalming in those days. There were only five leaden coffins in the entire cemetery, four of which were identified as those of strangers. While the features of the body in the fifth coffin were easily recognizable when compared with the accurate busts and medals of Paul Jones, while his initials were found upon the linen and the identity was convincing from the first, yet it was deemed prudent, on account of the importance of the subject, to submit the body to a thorough scientific examination by the most competent experts in the profession of anthropology, in order that the proofs might be authoritatively established and officially placed on record. The most eminent scientists of France, to whom we owe a lasting debt of gratitude, contributed their efforts to this task in the presence of the members of the American embassy and the consulate and the highest officials of the municipality of Paris.

The identification was rendered easy and was established with absolute certainty by reason of the authentic busts and medals obtainable for making the comparative measurements, the abundance of accurate information in existence descriptive of the dead, and the excellent state of preservation of the body, due to the alcohol, which enabled the scientists to perform an autopsy that verified in every particular the disease of which it was known the subject had died.

Twelve American or French persons took part in the identification, and after six days passed in the application of every conceivable test, their affirmative verdict was positive and unanimous and was formally certified to under the official seals of their respective departments, as may be seen from their reports filed with the Government, both in Washington and in Paris.

All that is mortal of the conqueror of the Serapis lies in yonder coffin. He bore the standard of his country for the first time to France; he returned with it draped upon his bier. That generous land, our traditional friend and former ally, now sends a squadron of her noble war ships to unite in doing honor to the memory of an illustrious brother sailor.

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