Page:Memoir of George McClellan MD.djvu/12

 importance of a thorough system of education. At this excellent institution, George made unusual progress, manifesting the same energy and rapidity which characterized him in after life. He excelled at sports, as did his father, by reason of a remarkable strength and quickness of sight and an unequalled unison in the movements of his hand and eye. It is related of him, as illustrative of this happy unison which, by cultivation, became of inestimable value in his surgical operations, that on one occasion, although he had never previously fired a pistol, he, in several successive shots, did not once miss the mark.

This gift manifested itself at a yet earlier period. When a child, he became expert at a practice of transfixing minute objects by darting a pointed instrument at them. To such acts of childhood, he has attributed much of his surgical character, his remarkable rapidity in taking up arteries; his trueness in striking upon arteries and other important parts with the point of the knife; and his instantaneous and true manner of passing the needle and cataract knife into the eye.

I may here add an anecdote in evidence of an early application of his dexterity to surgery. A servant of his uncle, from an accident, had a fracture with displacement of bone and profuse hæmorrhage. The family physician, living at a distance, was immediately sent for. George, in the meanwhile, was at the case, set the bone and bandaged. The professional gentleman, on arrival, had only to say, in compliment to the lad, that he had supplanted him and made his visit useless. This way, be it right or wrong, George has had through life. In the fall of 1812, McClellan entered the Sophomore class of Yale College, at the age of sixteen years—an early age to be a Yale sophomore. This is an apparently trifling circumstance, but it gave George the