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Page 13
"How I wished it had been somebody who knew something! But I did as well
as I could. I told him of the English war. I told him about Fulton and
the steamboat beginning. I told him about old Scott, and Jackson; told
him all I could think of about the Mississippi, and New Orleans, and
Texas, and his own old Kentucky. And do you think, he asked who was in
command of the 'Legion of the West.' I told him it was a very gallant
officer named Grant, and that, by our last news, he was about to
establish his head-quarters at Vicksburg. Then, 'Where was Vicksburg?' I
worked that out on the map; it was about a hundred miles, more or less,
above his old Fort Adams; and I thought Fort Adams must he a ruin now.
'It must be at old Vick's plantation,' at Walnut Hills, said he: 'well,
that is a change!'
"I tell you, Ingham, it was a hard thing to condense the history of half
a century into that talk with a sick man. And I do not now know what I
told him,--of emigration, and the means of it,--of steamboats, and
railroads, and telegraphs,--of inventions, and books, and
literature,--of the colleges, and West Point, and the Naval School,--but
with the queerest interruptions that ever you heard. You see it was
Robinson Crusoe asking all the accumulated questions of fifty-six
years!
"I remember he asked, all of a sudden, who was President now; and when I
told him, he asked if Old Abe was General Benjamin Lincoln's son. He
said he met old General Lincoln, when he was quite a boy himself, at
some Indian treaty. I said no, that Old Abe was a Kentuckian like
himself, but I could not tell him of what family; he had worked up from
the ranks. 'Good for him!' cried Nolan; 'I am glad of that. As I have
brooded and wondered, I have thought our danger was in keeping up those
regular successions in the first families.' Then I got talking about my
visit to Washington. I told him of meeting the Oregon Congressman,
Harding; I told him about the Smithsonian, and the Exploring Expedition;
I told him about the Capitol, and the statues for the pediment, and
Crawford's Liberty, and Greenough's Washington: Ingham, I told him
everything I could think of that would show the grandeur of his country
and its prosperity; but I could not make up my mouth to tell him a word
about this infernal Rebellion!
"And he drank it in, and enjoyed it as I cannot tell you. He grew more
and more silent, yet I never thought he was tired or faint. I gave him a
glass of water, but he just wet his lips, and told me not to go away.
Then he asked me to bring the Presbyterian 'Book of Public Prayer,'
which lay there, and said, with a smile, that it would open at the right
place,--and so it did. There was his double red mark down the page; and
I knelt down and read, and he repeated with me, 'For ourselves and our
country, O gracious God, we thank Thee, that, notwithstanding our
manifold transgressions of Thy holy laws, Thou hast continued to us Thy
marvellous kindness,'--and so to the end of that thanksgiving. Then he
turned to the end of the same book, and I read the words more familiar
to me: 'Most heartily we beseech Thee with Thy favor to behold and bless
Thy servant, the President of the United States, and all others in
authority,'--and the rest of the Episcopal collect. 'Danforth,' said he,
'I have repeated those prayers night and morning, it is now fifty-five
years.' And then he said he would go to sleep. He bent me down over him
and kissed me; and he said, 'Look in my Bible, Danforth, when I am
gone.' And I went away.
"But I had no thought it was the end. I thought he was tired and would
sleep. I knew he was happy and I wanted him to be alone.
"But in an hour, when the doctor went in gently he found Nolan had
breathed his life away with a smile. He had something pressed close to
his lips. It was his father's badge of the Order of the Cincinnati.
"We looked in his Bible, and there was a slip of paper at the place
where he had marked the text:--
"'They desire a country, even a heavenly: wherefore God is not ashamed
to be called their God: for he hath prepared for them a city.'
"On this slip of paper he had written:--
"'Bury me in the sea; it has been my home, and I love it. But will not
some one set up a stone for my memory at Fort Adams or at Orleans, that
my disgrace may not be more than I ought to bear? Say on it:--
"'_In Memory of_
PHILIP NOLAN,
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