of

told him, of emigration, and the means of it, of steamboats, and railroads, and telegraphs, 735 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!

740

"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's1 son. He said he met old General Lincoln, when he was quite a boy himself, at some Indian treaty. I said no, that Old 745 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 750 successions in the first families.' Then I got talk

ing about my visit to Washington.

"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 755 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

1 Lincoln, General Benjamin Lincoln, was a Revolutionary soldier.

the page; and I knelt down and read, and he repeated 760 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 marvelous kindness,' - and so to the end of that thanksgiving. Then he turned to the 765 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,' 770 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.

775

"But in an hour, when the doctor went in gently, he found Nolan had breathed his life away with a 780 smile. He had something pressed close to his lips. It was his father's badge of the Order of Cincinnati.1 "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: where- 785

1 Order of Cincinnati, an order formed in 1783 by officers of the Revolutionary Army. Its membership has always been limited to such officers and their oldest descendants in the direct line in each generation.

fore 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:

666

Bury me in the sea; it has been my home, and 790 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:

795

"In Memory of

"PHILIP NOLAN,

"Lieutenant of the Army of the United States.

"He loved his country as no other man has loved her; but no man deserved less at her hands.

EDWARD EVERETT HALE.

QUESTIONS FOR STUDY

Find out as much as you can about the life of Aaron Burr and his place in American history. (Line 34.)

Find and tell the story of the annexation of Texas. (Line 549.)

Does The Man Without A Country seem like a true story?.

Point out the features that make it more realistic. Are they the great events, or the details about little things?

Observe the first few sentences. Do they arouse interest in what is to follow? Do they add to the

feeling of reality? Remember that the beginning of a narrative is very important.

Does the story move rapidly or slowly? Point out passages that answer this question.

Every tale should have a climax. Where is the climax ?

Does anything show the character of the one who is telling the story? Is this important?

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

(1807-1882)

Longfellow shares with Whittier the honor of being the most popular of American poets, and with Poe that of being the greatest. His poetry, most of it,

is simple and direct, and from the heart. It is of high ethical quality and appeals to the average reader to whom perhaps Browning, for example, appears unreadable.