Every occasion finds a _man_ to meet the exigencies of the hour, every conflict brings forth its hero, and every war educates soldiers for a war to come. War begets the warrior. Washington came out of the French and Indian wars, Jackson from the Creek wars; Scott and Taylor both emerged from Chippewa and Lundy's Lane, Grant and Lee from Mexico. So, George Dewey came out of the fierce internecine strife of our Civil War. He came, too, from one of the great sources of the best elements of our American population. The Puritans of New England and the Cavaliers of Virginia sprung from the same soil and a common ancestry, worked side by side, in a widely different manner, but to the same end; and from these two classes have sprung nearly all our great soldiers, statesmen, and authors. From the former came the great naval hero of the Spanish-American War. [Illustration: Admiral Dewey at Manila Bay.] George Dewey was born in Montpelier, Vermont, on December 26, 1837, of direct descent, in the ninth generation, from Thomas Dewey, who came from Sandwich, England, to Dorchester, in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, in 1633. His father, Dr. Julius Dewey, was a physician, eminent in his profession, and loved and respected, not only for his ability but for his innate nobility of character; and his mother was Mary Perrin. His ancestors on both sides were patriots in the days that tried men's souls, the hard and bitter days of the Colonial and Revolutionary Wars. He was the third of four children, and even in his boyhood he was a leader among his fellows. His breaches of discipline culminated in his heading an insurrection against the village school-master; but the pedagogue came off victorious, and administered a severe flogging to the young rebel, which punishment his father is said to have reinforced with some home-brewed medicine. The lesson was well learned, for we hear of no more insurrections.