Two youthful forms are lying apart from the thickest fray, The one in Northern blue, the other in Southern gray. Around his lifeless foeman the arms of each are pressed, And the head of one is pillowed upon the other's breast. As if two loving brothers, wearied with work and play, Had fallen asleep together, at close of the summer day. Foemen were they, and brothers?--Again the battle's din, With its sullen, cruel answer, from far away breaks in. BENJAMIN SLEDD. OLD HEART OF OAK TO the Navy is ascribed the larger shares in the Civil War, of overcoming the prowess of the South. "The blockade sapped the industrial strength of the Confederacy." A powerful factor in this blockade was David G. Farragut. Farragut was a Southerner by birth--a Tennessean--and fought, as it were, against his own hearthstone. Yet, when it is considered that from early youth he was in the marine service of the government and by arms upheld the national flag, and when it is remembered with what reverence the seaman regards the flag under which he serves, his choice is not surprising. Scenes wherein men fought and died for the Stars and Stripes and often with their dying breath expressing adoration of the nation's emblem were common experiences of his life. In his memoirs is related a pathetic story of a youth's death from accidental shooting. "Put me in the boat," implored he of his comrades, "that I may die under my country's flag." Another, a young Scotchman, who had a leg cut off in battle, cried out mournfully, "I can no longer be of use to the flag of my adoption," and threw himself overboard. The necessity of choosing between the North and the South brought Farragut many sleepless nights and forced him between the fires of censure from the South and doubt of his fealty from the North, as it was recognized that the Southern man, as a rule, felt that his first allegiance was due to his State. When he was but a lad of seven years, Farragut lost his mother and was adopted by his father's friend, that fighting old Commodore David Porter, who was destined to raise both his adopted and his own son to become admirals in the United States Navy.