Famous Stories Every Child Should Know Part 16

But yet his horse was not a whit Inclined to tarry there; For why?--his owner had a house Full ten miles off, at Ware.

So like an arrow swift he flew, Shot by an archer strong; So did he fly--which brings me to The middle of my song.

Away went Gilpin, out of breath, And sore against his will, Till at his friend's the calender's His horse at last stood still.

The calender, amazed to see His neighbour in such trim, Laid down his pipe, flew to the gate, And thus accosted him:

"What news? what news? your tidings tell; Tell me you must and shall-- Say why bareheaded you are come, Or why you come at all?"

Now Gilpin had a pleasant wit, And loved a timely joke; And thus unto the calender In merry guise he spoke:

"I came because your horse would come, And, if I well forebode, My hat and wig will soon be here, They are upon the road."

The calender, right glad to find His friend in merry pin, Returned him not a single word, But to the house went in;

Whence straight he came with hat and wig, A wig that flowed behind, A hat not much the worse for wear, Each comely in its kind.

He held them up, and in his turn Thus showed his ready wit, "My head is twice as big as yours, They therefore needs must fit.

"But let me sc.r.a.pe the dirt away That hangs upon your face; And stop and eat, for well you may Be in a hungry case."

Said John, "It is my wedding-day, And all the world would stare, If wife should dine at Edmonton, And I should dine at Ware."

So turning to his horse, he said, "I am in haste to dine; 'Twas for your pleasure you came here, You shall go back for mine."

Ah, luckless speech, and bootless boast!

For which he paid full dear; For, while he spake, a braying a.s.s Did sing most loud and clear;

Whereat his horse did snort, as he Had heard a lion roar, And galloped off with all his might, As he had done before.

Away went Gilpin, and away Went Gilpin's hat and wig: He lost them sooner than at first; For why?--they were too big.

Now Mrs. Gilpin, when she saw Her husband posting down Into the country far away, She pulled out half-a-crown;

And thus unto the youth, she said, That drove them to the Bell, "This shall be yours, when you bring back My husband safe and well."

The youth did ride, and soon did meet John coming back amain; Whom in a trice he tried to stop, By catching at his rein;

But not performing what he meant, And gladly would have done, The frightened steed he frighted more, And made him faster run.

Away went Gilpin, and away Went postboy at his heels, The postboy's horse right glad to miss The lumbering of the wheels.

Six gentlemen upon the road, Thus seeing Gilpin fly, With postboy scampering in the rear, They raised the hue and cry:--

"Stop thief! stop thief! a highwayman!"

Not one of them was mute; And all and each that pa.s.sed that way Did join in the pursuit.

And now the turnpike gates again Flew open in short s.p.a.ce; The toll-men thinking, as before, That Gilpin rode a race.

And so he did, and won it too, For he got first to town; Nor stopped till where he had got up He did again get down.

Now let us sing, Long live the king!

And Gilpin long live he; And, when he next doth ride abroad, May I be there to see!

--WILLIAM COWPER

VIII

THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY

I suppose that very few casual readers of the _New York Herald_ of August 13, 1863, observed, in an obscure corner, among the "Deaths,"

the announcement,--

"NOLAN. Died, on board U.S. Corvette _Levant_, Lat. 2 11'

S., Long. 131 W., on the 11th of May, PHILIP NOLAN."

I happened to observe it, because I was stranded at the old Mission House in Mackinaw, waiting for a Lake Superior steamer which did not choose to come, and I was devouring to the very stubble all the current literature I could get hold of, even down to the deaths and marriages in the _Herald_. My memory for names and people is good, and the reader will see, as he goes on, that I had reason enough to remember Philip Nolan. There are hundreds of readers who would have paused at that announcement, if the officer of the _Levant_ who reported it had chosen to make it thus: "Died May 11th, THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY." For it was as "The Man without a Country" that poor Philip Nolan had generally been known by the officers who had him in charge during some fifty years, as, indeed, by all the men who sailed under them. I dare say there is many a man who has taken wine with him once a fortnight, in a three years' cruise, who never knew that his name was "Nolan," or whether the poor wretch had any name at all.

There can now be no possible harm in telling this poor creature's story. Reason enough there has been till now ever since Madison's administration went out in 1817, for very strict secrecy, the secrecy of honour itself, among the gentlemen of the navy who have had Nolan in successive charge. And certainly it speaks well for the _esprit de corps_ of the profession, and the personal honour of its members, that to the press this man's story has been wholly unknown--and, I think, to the country at large also. I have reason to think, from some investigations I made in the Naval Archives when I was attached to the Bureau of Construction, that every official report relating to him was burned when Ross burned the public buildings at Was.h.i.+ngton. One of the Tuckers, or possibly one of the Watsons, had Nolan in charge at the end of the war; and when, on returning from his cruise, he reported at Was.h.i.+ngton to one of the Crownins.h.i.+elds--who was in the Navy Department when he came home--he found that the Department ignored the whole business. Whether they really knew nothing about it, or whether it was a "_Non mi ricordo_," determined on as a piece of policy I do not know. But this I do know, that since 1817, and possibly before, no naval officer has mentioned Nolan in his report of a cruise.

But, as I say, there is no need for secrecy any longer. And now the poor creature is dead, it seems to me worth while to tell a little of his story, by way of showing young Americans of to-day what it is to be A MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY.

PHILIP NOLAN was as fine a young officer as there was in the "Legion of the West," as the Western division of our army was then called.

When Aaron Burr made his first das.h.i.+ng expedition down to New Orleans in 1805, at Fort Ma.s.sac, or somewhere above on the river, he met, as the Devil would have it, this gay, das.h.i.+ng, bright young fellow; at some dinner-party, I think. Burr marked him, talked to him, walked with him, took him a day or two's voyage in his flat-boat, and, in short, fascinated him. For the next year, barrack-life was very tame to poor Nolan. He occasionally availed himself of the permission the great man had given him to write to him. Long, high-worded, stilted letters the poor boy wrote and rewrote and copied. But never a line did he have in reply from the gay deceiver. The other boys in the garrison sneered at him, because he lost the fun which they found in shooting or rowing while he was working away on these grand letters to his grand friend. They could not understand why Nolan kept by himself while they were playing high-low-jack. Poker was not yet invented. But before long the young fellow had his revenge. For this time His Excellency, Honourable Aaron Burr, appeared again under a very different aspect. There were rumours that he had an army behind him and everybody supposed that he had an empire before him. At that time the youngsters all envied him. Burr had not been talking twenty minutes with the commander before he asked him to send for Lieutenant Nolan. Then after a little talk he asked Nolan if he could show him something of the great river and the plans for the new post. He asked Nolan to take him out in his skiff to show him a canebrake or a cottonwood tree, as he said, really to seduce him; and by the time the sail was over, Nolan was enlisted body and soul. From that time, though he did not yet know it, he lived as A MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY.

What Burr meant to do I know no more than you, dear reader. It is none of our business just now. Only, when the grand catastrophe came, and Jefferson and the House of Virginia of that day undertook to break on the wheel all the possible Clarences of the then House of York, by the great treason trial at Richmond, some of the lesser fry in that distant Mississippi Valley, which was farther from us than Puget's Sound is to-day, introduced the like novelty on their provincial stage; and, to while away the monotony of the summer at Fort Adams, got up, for _spectacles_, a string of courts-martial on the officers there. One and another of the colonels and majors were tried, and, to fill out the list, little Nolan, against whom, Heaven knows, there was evidence enough--that he was sick of the service, had been willing to be false to it, and would have obeyed any order to march any whither with anyone who would follow him had the order been signed, "By command of His Exc. A. Burr." The courts dragged on. The big flies escaped, rightly for all I know. Nolan was proved guilty enough, as I say; yet you and I would never have heard of him, reader, but that, when the president of the court asked him at the close whether he wished to say anything to show that he had always been faithful to the United States, he cried out, in a fit of frenzy--

"d.a.m.n the United States! I wish I may never hear of the United States again!"

I suppose he did not know how the words shocked old Colonel Morgan, who was holding the court. Half the officers who sat in it had served through the Revolution, and their lives, not to say their necks, had been risked for the very idea which he so cavalierly cursed in his madness. He, on his part, had grown up in the West of those days, in the midst of "Spanish plot," "Orleans plot," and all the rest. He had been educated on a plantation where the finest company was a Spanish officer or a French merchant from Orleans. His education, such as it was, had been perfected in commercial expeditions to Vera Cruz, and I think he told me his father once hired an Englishman to be a private tutor for a winter on the plantation. He had spent half his youth with an older brother, hunting horses in Texas; and, in a word, to him "United States" was scarcely a reality. Yet he had been fed by "United States" for all the years since he had been in the army. He had sworn on his faith as a Christian to be true to "United States." It was "United States" which gave him the uniform he wore, and the sword by his side. Nay, my poor Nolan, it was only because "United States" had picked you out first as one of her own confidential men of honour that "A. Burr" cared for you a straw more than for the flat-boat men who sailed his ark for him. I do not excuse Nolan; I only explain to the reader why he d.a.m.ned his country, and wished he might never hear her name again.

He never did hear her name but once again. From that moment, Sept. 23, 1807, till the day he died, May 11, 1863, he never heard her name again. For that half-century and more he was a man without a country.

Old Morgan, as I said, was terribly shocked. If Nolan had compared George Was.h.i.+ngton to Benedict Arnold, or had cried, "G.o.d save King George," Morgan would not have felt worse. He called the court into his private room, and returned in fifteen minutes, with a face like a sheet, to say:

"Prisoner, hear the sentence of the Court! The Court decides, subject to the approval of the President, that you never hear the name of the United States again."

Nolan laughed. But n.o.body else laughed. Old Morgan was too solemn, and the whole room was hushed dead as night for a minute. Even Nolan lost his swagger in a moment. Then Morgan added:

"Mr. Marshal, take the prisoner to Orleans in an armed boat, and deliver him to the naval commander there."

The marshal gave his orders and the prisoner was taken out of court.

"Mr. Marshal," continued old Morgan, "see that no one mentions the United States to the prisoner. Mr. Marshal, make my respects to Lieutenant Mitch.e.l.l at Orleans, and request him to order that no one shall mention the United States to the prisoner while he is on board s.h.i.+p. You will receive your written orders from the officer on duty here this evening. The Court is adjourned without day."