Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1863-12-10
:od = Right IN the midst of one of

as Hesiod Right in the midst of enc of
Napoleon's battles. or one Of Canning
speeches, poor \ olan would fud ere at hole,
because on the back Of the page OF that pa
per there had been an advertisement of a
packet for View York or scrap from the
Presidents messa ge.aSIsav this was theafrst
time / ever heard of this plan, which after
wards had enough, and more than enough,
to do with. I remember it, because poor
Phillips, who was of. the party, as soon as
the allusion to reading was made told a
story of something which, happened at
the Cape of Good Hope on Nolan's first
voyage; and it is the only thing I ever
knew of that voyage. They had touched
at the Cape, and had done the civil thing
with the English Admiral and the fleet, and
then, leaving for a long cruise up the lndi-
an Ocean, Phillips had borrowed a lot of
English books from an officer, which, in
those days, as indeed in these, was quite
windtall. Among them, as the Devil would
order, was the Lay of the Last Minstrel,
which they had all of them heard of, but
which most of them had never seen. think
it could not have been published long.
Well nobody thought there could be any
risk of anything national in that, though
Phillips swore old Shaw had cut out the
Tempest" from Shakespeare before he let
Nolan have it, because he said ssfhe Bermu-
das ought to be ours, and, by Jove, should
be one day" So Nolan was permitted to
join the circle one afternoon when lot of
them sat ON deck smoking and reading aloud.
People do not do such things so often now :;
but when was young We got rid of a great
deal Of time so. Well, SO it happened that
in his turn, Nolan took the book and read to
the others; and he read very well, as | know.
Nobody in the circle knew line Of the po-
EN-, only twas all magic an Border clivalry,
aud was ten thousand years ago. Poor Nolan
read steadily through the fifth canto, stopped
minute and drank something, and then be-
gan, without thought of what was coming
q Breathes there the man with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said,"-
1t seems impossible to Us that anybody ever
heard this for the first time; but all these
fellows did then, and poor Nolan himself went
on, still unconsciously or mechanically
This is my own, my native and.'
Then they all saw something was to pay
but he expected to get through, | suppose,
turned little pale, but plunged on
"Whose heart la n meier within him burned, .
As home his footsteps he hath turned
From wandering foreign strand
II such there breathe, go, mark him WELL
By this time the men were all beside them
selves, wishing there was any way 10 make
him turn over two pages: but he had not
quite presence Of mind for that; he gagged
little, colored crimson and staggered on
For him no minstrel raptures swell
High though his titles, proud his name,
Doundess his wealth wish claim,
Despite these titles, power and pelf,
The wretch concentred all in self, =
and here the poor fellow choked, could not
90 on, but started up, swung the book into
the sea, vanished into his state room, and
by Jove," said Phillips, eve did not see him
for two months again. And had to make
up some beggarly story to that English sur
geon why did not return his Walter Scott
to him" ----
That story shows about the time when No
lan's braggadocia must have been broken
down. At first, they said, he took a very
high tone, considered his Imprisonment mere
farce, affected to enjoy the voyage, and all
that; but Phillips said that after he came out
of the state room he never was the same man
again. He never read aloud again, unless it
the Bible or Shakespeare, or something
else he was sure Of But it was not that
merely. He never entered III with the other
young men exactly as companion again. lie
was always shy afterwards, when knew him,
very seldom spoke, unless he was spoken to,
except to very few friends. He lighted up
occasionally,-I remember late in his life
hearing him fairly eloquent on something
which had been suggested to him by one of
Flechiers sermons,--but generally he had the
nervous, tired look of heart wounded man.
When Captain Shaw was coming home,-
if, as / say, it was Shaw,-rather to the
prise of everybody, they made one Of the
-ar1 IS11 Law Off md fnr
nearly week. The boys said the officers
were sick of salt junk and meant to have
turtle soup before they came home. But al
ter several days the Warren came to the
same rendezvous they exchanged signals :;
she sent to Phillips and these hOmeward
bound men letters and papers, and told them
she was outward bound, perhaps to the Med
iterranean, and took poor Nolan and his traps
on the boat back to try his second cruise.
He looked very blank when he was told to
get ready to join her. He had known enough
of the signs of the sky to know that till that
moment he was going "home." But this was
a distinct evidence of something he ha i not
thought of, perhaps,-that there was no going
home for HIM, even to prison. And this
was the first of some twenty such transfers,
which brought him sooner or later into half
our best vessels, but which kept him all his
life at least some hundred miles from the
country he had hoped he might never hear of
again.
1t may have been on that second cruise
it was once when ne was up the Mediterra-
nean,-that Mrs. Graft, the celebrated South
ern beauty of those days danced, with him.
They had been lying long time in the Bay
of Naples, and the officers were very intimate
in the English fleet, and there had been great
festivities, and our men thought they must
give a grand ball on board the ship. How
they ever did it on board the W arren | am
sure | do not know. Perhaps it was not the
Warren, or perhaps ladies did not take up so
much room as they do now. They wanted to
use Nolan's state room for something and they
hated to do it without asking him to the bali
so the captain said they might ask him, if they
would be responsible that he did not talk with
the wrong people, who would give him in
telligence." So the dance went on, the finest
party that had ever been known, | dare say;
for | never heard OF man-of-war ball that
was not. For ladies they had the family of
the American Consul, one or two travellers
who had adventured so far, and nice bevv
of English girls and matrons perhaps Lady
Hamilton herself .- s-.~.
Well, different officers relieved each other
IN standing and talking to Nolan in friendly
way, so as to be sure that nobody else spoke
to him. The dancing went on with spirit
and after while even the fellows who took
this honorary guard of Nolan ceased to fear
any coaetre Temps Only when some English
lady-Lady Hamilton, as l said, perhaps
called for set of American Dances" an
odd thing happened. Everybody then danced
contra-dances The black band nothing