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[416] At four he had learned to read well. From five to eight he was taught by an excellent New England teacher, Miss Berry of Belfast, Me. In September, 1851, he was placed in Theodore D. Weld's family school at Belleville, New Jersey, where he remained until, in 1854, Mr. Weld removed to Eagleswood, Perth Amboy. Hither Mr. Birney came, and here he lived until his death in the fall of 1857. During these invalid years Fitzhugh was a nurse to him, as tender and gentle as a girl. He was a thorough and ambitious student. He unconsciously exerted over his mates a powerful personal influence which they were glad to feel and acknowledge. If others rivalled him in some feats of the play-ground and gymnasium, none excelled in so many, none threw over all sports such a fascination as he. In his seventeenth year he had the happiness to save the life of a school-girl too adventurous in learning to swim. She had sunk once; the tide was running rapidly to the sea. Without taking off hat, coat, or shoes, Fitzhugh, who had watched her from the pier, plunged in, seized her as she rose, and supported her till help came. Among his companions at this school was one afterwards known as General Llewellyn F. Haskell, whose rapid promotion was the reward of equal talent, valor, and good fortune. Another was that brave Quaker, Captain Hallock Mann, whose gallant rescue of General Kilpatrick at Aldie Gap, Virginia, was one of the memorable deeds of the war. Kilpatrick was in the hands of the enemy. Mann, seeing his men hesitate, shouted, ‘Are you heroes or cowards? Follow me! Charge!’ and, without looking back, dashed into the fight. His troop, fired by the example, rallied, dispersed the Confederates, and carried him, severely wounded, with the General, from the field. Captain Mann was killed in a subsequent battle. In the spring of 1859, a wrestling-match with his young friend Mann brought on bleeding at the lungs, which obliged Fitzhugh to abandon his purpose of entering college that year. The following July he sailed for Europe, arriving there shortly
Sever and Francis, 1866.
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