Yacht club, of New York, and the Metropolitan club of Washington. He is not identified with any political party, and has not held public office outside of his profession.
While he has not, since the heyday of youth, devoted especial attention to athletics, Admiral Schley is an ardent devotee of outdoor life and exercise, and spends much time in walking, fishing, and other open air sports and exercises. Asked what especial lines of reading he has found most helpful in fitting him for the work of life, Admiral Schley cites the Bible, and works which relate to general history and the intellectual development of Europe, as well as the works of Thackeray, Washington Irving, Cooper, Moore, Tennyson and Longfellow. In his own profession he was particularly inspired by the careers of Blake, Nelson, De Ruyter, De Witte, Van Tromp, Hawk, Collingwood, Wellington, Napoleon, Washington and others. However, his strongest impulse to strive for such prizes in life as he afterward won, came from the lives and careers of the great captains who had gone before him, and especially from the careers and examples of that trio of famous admirals, Farragut, Porter, and Foote.
Estimating the effect of different influences upon his own success in life, Admiral Schley has placed "first, the home, as the abiding place of love and patriotism"; next, school and its companionships, as teaching equality and establishing the friendships of life; and contact with men in active life, as widening experience and broadening views of duty, of honor, of honesty and purpose as a citizen. Admiral Schley has attributed to love of travel, always strong in youth, his own choice of a profession. As a suggestion to young Americans in search of the secret of success, he says: "There is no profitable life to any one who does not remember that honor, honesty, and truthfulness in all things are the primordial law of usefulness in the fullest and widest sense everywhere. These added to charity in all things must result in good citizenship."
