GEOEGE W. GOETHALS 217 time was Gen. Alexander S. Webb, a noted soldier, whose brigade had received the frontal attack of Pickett ^s charge at Gettysburg and who had been awarded the Congressional Medal of Honoi^. He was a sturdy gentleman of the old school who used to say to his pupils: **A man can do any- thing so long as he doesn^t lie.'^ Founded by the City of New York as **The Free Academy,'* it was the original aim to make the school a sort of civil West Point. Mental dis- cipline was sought in the sciences and the modem languages as well as in the classics. West Point text books such as Bartlett's Mechanics j and Acoustics and Optics were used — tough books, too — and West Point teachers came frequently to lecture. At this time, as Mr. Burchard describes him, he was tall and straight, a modest boy with the **milk and blood com- plexion of the low countries, yellow hair and blue eyes, a typical young Hollander. Though not widely known among other students, for the necessity of bread-winning consumed every vacant hour, his name appears here as a member of Clionia, a local literary society, and of Delta Upsilon, an * * an- ti-secret" fraternity. Goethals's early ambition was to be a doctor. His grand- father had been a doctor and it had been traditional for some one, or more, Goethals of each generation to enter that pro- fession. Accordingly he matriculated at Columbia College with the idea of taking the medical course, but his health, un- dermined by years of excessive work, began to fail. He grew thin and stooping, and he began to be fearful that he could not stand the strain of taking a severe course in medicine and at the same time earning his way. It then occurred to him, perhaps the result of the West Point influence at City College, to go into the navy or army. His first choice was the navy, but having no influential friends, there seemed no way for him to get an appointment. BHnally he wrote a let- ter to General Grant, then president; but though he waited a long time he received no reply. He was not, however, the sort of boy to be easily discour- aged. He next applied to ** Sunset" Cox, at that time the
