Besides, he has an object in view that stirs his blood. He is to fit himself for the navy; his father has promised his influence to get him an appointment, if wanted, and Admiral Nelson and all other brave admirals and commodores are his models. For the first time in his life he takes hold of study with enthusiasm. The institution was very popular in its day, and a great advance upon the old academy. It was semi-military in its methods, and in its government there was great thoroughness without severity. Its teachers possessed superior qualifications, and all were men of great kindness as well as of marked ability. Among them were two men who especially had great influence in directing his energies and preparing him not only for Amherst College but for the greater work beyond, and who were ever remembered by him with the deepest gratitude. The first of these was W. P. Fitzgerald, the teacher of mathematics at Mount Pleasant School: "He taught me to conquer in studying. There is a very hour in which a young nature, tugging, discouraged, and weary with books, rises with the consciousness of victorious power into masterhood. For ever after he knows that he can learn anything if he pleases. It is a distinct intellectual conversion. "I first went to the blackboard, uncertain, soft, full of whimpering. 'That lesson must be learned,' he said, in a very quiet tone, but with a terrible intensity and with the certainty of Fate. All explanations and excuses he trod under foot with utter scornfulness. 'I want that problem. I don't want any reasons why I don't get it.' "'I did study it two hours.' "'That's nothing to me; I want the lesson. You need not study it at all, or you may study it ten hours--just to suit yourself. I want the lesson. Underwood, go to the blackboard!' "'Oh! yes, but Underwood got somebody to _show_ him his lesson.' "'What do I care _how_ you get it? That's your business. But you must have it.' "It was tough for a green boy, but it seasoned him. In less than a month I had the most intense sense of intellectual independence and courage to defend my recitations. "In the midst of a lesson his cold and calm voice would fall upon me in the midst of a demonstration--'_No_!' I hesitated, stopped, and then went back to the beginning; and, on reaching the same spot again, '_No_!' uttered with the tone of perfect conviction, barred my progress. 'The next!' and I sat down in red confusion. He, too, was stopped with 'No!' but went right on, finished, and, as he sat down, was rewarded with, 'Very well.' "'Why,' whimpered I, 'I recited it just as he did, and you said No!' "'Why didn't you say _Yes_, and stick to it? It is not enough to know your lesson. You must _know_ that you know it. You have learned nothing until you are _sure_. If all the world says _No_, your business is to say _Yes_ and to _prove it!_'" The other helper of this period was John E. Lovell.