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344 constant surveillance at West Point, send him out to a two-company post upon the frontier, where he does little but play seven-up and drink whiskey at the sutler's, and by the time he is forty-five years old, he will furnish the most complete illustration of suppressed mental development of which human nature is capable."

Though without business training or inclination for business life, General Maury went to work with a will. Being a graduate of the University and of West Point, he decided to establish a classical and mathematical academy for boys at Fredericksburg, where he lived. Though he always spoke in humorous depreciation of the school, it succeeded. But teaching was not at all to General Maury's tastes, and when offered a lucrative position with an express company at New Orleans, he accepted. After he had been in the employ of the company for some time he resigned to embark in the manufacture of rosin and turpentine in St. Tammany Parish, La. For a year General Maury succeeded profitably in his new enterprise, but owing to the embarrassments of the old army friend who was advancing him money for the business, he was unable to carry it on successfully. General Maury continued the enterprise until he had lost nearly every cent.

He went to New Orleans with only $2.50 in his pocket. He went to the office of an old friend, General Simon B. Buckner, to whom he told his plight. General Buckner told him the office of secretary of the Southern Hospital Association had just been created the previous night, at a salary of $125 a month. He asked General Maury if he would accept it.

"As that is just $125 more than my present income, of course I will accept," replied General Maury. He received the appointment. The salary was soon increased to $200 a month.

It was in New Orleans, in 1868, that General Maury set on foot a plan for the systematic collection of Southern war records, which resulted in the formation of the Southern Historical Society. In August, 1873, at a convention held at the White Sulphur Springs, the domicile of the society was removed to the Capitol at Richmond, and General Maury was made Chairman of the Executive Committee.

During the contest of Tilden and Hayes for the presidency, and