Mineral Point weekly tribune. (Mineral Point, Wis.) 1859-1868, 1863-12-09


Napoleon's battles, or one of Canning.
speeches, poor Nolan would find a great hole
because on the back Of the page Of that ma
per there had been an al sertisenielt Of a
packet for New York, ora scrap from The
fresidents message. | saw this. was the first
time ever heard of this plan, which after
wards had enough, and more than enough
to do with. | remember it, because poor
Philips, who was of the party as soon as
the alluslon to reading was made told
story OF something which happened at
the Cape of Good Hope on Nolan's first
voyage; and it is the only thing / 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 long cruise UP the Indi-
an Ocean, Phillips had borrowed lot of
English books from an officer, which, in
those days, as indeed In these, was quite
wlndfail. Among them, as the Devil would
order, was the Lay of the Last Minstrel
which they had ali of them heard Of but
which most of them had never seen. | think
it could not have been published long
Veil, 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 the Bermu-
das ought to be ours, and, by Jove, should
be one day" So Nolan was permitted to
JON the circle one afternoon when a 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 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 it was all magic an Border chivalry,
and was ten thousand years ago. Poor Nolan
read steadily through the fifth canto, stopped
a minute and drank something, and then be
gan, without thought of what was coming
:, Breathes there the man with soul 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 chanically,-
''This is my own, my native land -
Then they all saw something was to pay /;
but he expected to get through, suppose,
| turned a little pale, but plunged on
"Whose heart hath meier within him burned
As home his footsteps he hath turned
From wandering on a foreign strand
1t such there breathe, go, mark him WELL
BY this time the men were all beside them
selves, wishing there any way to 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,
Boundless his wealth as wish claim,
Despite these titles, power and pelf,
The wretch concentred all in self,''-
and here the poor fellow choked, could not
go on, but started up swung the book into
the sea, vanished into his state room, and
by Jove," said Phillips, we did not see him
for two months again. And had to make
up some beggarly story to that English sur
geon why l did not return his Walter Scott
to him"
That story shows about the time when No
lans braggadocia must have been broken
down. At first, they said, he took very
high tone, considered his imprisonment a 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 saIae man
again. He never read aloud again, unless it
was the Bible or Shakespeare, or something
else he was sure of But it was not that
merely. He never entered in with the other
young men exactly as a companion again. He
always shy afterwards, when knew him,
very seldom spoke, unless he was spoken to,
except to u very few friends. He lighted up
occasionally remember late i'll his life
hearing him fairly eloquent something
which had been suggested to him by one OF
Flechier's sermons,-but generally he had the
nervous, tired look Of heart wounded man.
When Captain Shaw was coming home,-
if as | say, it was ShaN,-rather to the sur
prise OF everybody, they made one of the
Windward Islands, and lay off and on for
nearly week. The boys said the officers
were sick of salt junk, and meant to have
turtle soup before they came home. But af-
ter several days the Warren came to the
same rendezvous; they exchanged signals;
she sent to Phillips and these home ward
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 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 he 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 feet, and there had been great
festivities, and our men thought they must
give a grand ball on board the ship. How
they ever did IL on board the Warren | am
sure l 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 a nice bevy
of English girls and matrons, perhaps Lady
Hamilton herself.
Well, different officers relieved each other
in standing and talking to Nolan in a friendly
way, so as to be sure that nobody else spoke
to him. The dancing went on with spirit,
and after a while even the fellows who took
this honorary guard of Nolan ceased to fear
any co,stre temps. Only when some English
lady-Lady Hamilton, as | said perhaps
called for a set of American Dances" an
odd thing happened. Everybody then danced
contra-dances. The black band nothing
loath, conferred as to what American dances
were, and started off with g Virginia Reel"
Is, Il III