The National tribune., 1883-03-15
he expected to get through, suppose, turned
q little pale but plunged on

| As home his footsteps he hath turned
From wandering on a foreign strand?-
If such there breathe, go, mark him well"
BY this time the men were all beside them
selves, wishing there was 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,
Boundlcss his wealth 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, land, by Jove,"
said Phillips, eve did not see him for two
months again. And | had to make up some
beggarly story to that English surgeon why /
did not return his Walter Scott to him."
That story shOwsa about the time when Nolans
braggadocio must have broken down. At first,
! they said he took 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 his state-room he never was
thesame man again. He never read aloud again,
unless it was the Bible or Shakespeare, or some
! thing 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
was always shy afterwards when l 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 hear
ing him fairly eloquent on 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 Shaw-rather TO the surprise of
everybody they made one of the Windward
Islands, and lay off and on for nearly a week.
| The boys said the officers were sick of salt
junk, and meant to have turtle-soup before they
! came home. But after 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
Mediterranean, 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 mo-
ment he was going "home" But this was a
distinct evidence of something he had not
| thought of, perhaps,-that there was no going
| home for him, even to a prison. And this was
! the first of some twenty such transfers, which
brought him sooner or later into half of 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 Mediterranean
/ that Mrs. Graft the celebrated Southern beauty
| of those days, danced with him. They had
| been lying long time in the Bay of Naples,
|
! Iish feet, and there had been great festivities,
| and our men thought they must give a great
! ball on board the ship How they ever did it
| on board the Warren | 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 ball e; so the captain said
! they might ask him, if they would be respon-
| Sble that he did not talk with the wrong peO-
| pie, who would give him intelligence" 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 ma
! irons, perhaps Lady Hamilton herself.
Well, different officers relieved each other in
| standing and talking with 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
! c0Rtre-temps. Only when some English lady
! Lady Hamilton, as l said, perhaps-called for
q set of American Dances" an odd thing hap
| pened Everybody then danced contra-dances.
! The black band, nothing loath, conferred as to
! what American dances" were, and started Off
with Virginia Reel" which they followed
with Money Musk" which, in its turn in
those days, should have been followed by ''T The
| Old Thirteen" But just as Dick, the leader,
| tapped for his fiddles to begin, and bent for
| ward, about to say, in true negro state, The
| Old Thirteen gentlemen and ladieS!" as he
| had said "'Yirginny Reel if you please!" and
80 Money! Musk if you please!" the captain S
! boy tapped him on the shoulder, whispered to
! him, and he did not announce the name of the
| dance; he merely bowed, began on the air, and
! they all fell to,-thc officers teaching the Eng
| lish girls the figure, but not telling them why
| it had no name.
But that is not the story started to tell. AS
the dancing went on, Nolan and our fellows all
got at ease, as said so much so, that it seemed
! quite natural for him to bow TO that splendid
! Mrs. Graf, and say
"I hope you have not forgotten me, Miss
| Rutledge. Shall have the honor of dancing?"
! He did it quickly, that Shubrick, who was
! by him, could not hinder him. She laughed,
! and said
Il am not Miss Rutledge any longer, Mr..
! Nolan; but | will dance all the same" just
nodded to Shubrick, as if to say he must leave
| Mr. Nolan to her, and led him off to the place
where the dance was forming.
Nolan thought he had got his chance. He
| had known her at Philadelphia, and at other
! places had met her, and this was Godsend.
/ You could not talk i'll cOntra-d dances, as you do
! in cOtilOns, even in the pauSeS of waNing;
| but there were chances for tongues and sounds,
| as well FOR eyes and bushes. He began with
! her travels and Europe, and NeSuVluS, and the
! French; and then, when they had worked
| down, and had that long talking time at the
! bottom of the SET he said, bOldly-a little pale,
| she said, as she told me the story, years after
And what do you hear from home, Mrs.
| Graf?"
And that splendid creature looked through
| him. Jovei how she must have looked through
| him!
"Home!! Mr.. Nolan!! thought you were
! tEe man who never wanted to hear of home
| again !'-and she walked directly up the deck
! TO her husband, and left poor Nolan alone, as
| he always was. He did not dance again.
| / cannot give any history of him III order
rObody can nOw-and, indeed, / am not trying
! to. These are the traditions, which / sort out,
| as l believe them, from the myths which have
! been told about this man for forty years. The
! lies that have been told about him are legion.
| The fellows used to say he was the "Irsn
! Mask" and poor George Pons went to his
! grave in the belief that this was the author of
'Junius," who was being punished for his cele-
| brated libel on Thomas Jefferson. Pons was
not very strong in the historical line. A hap
pier story than either of these have told, is of
| the War. That came aleng soon after. ] have
! heard this affair told in three or four ways
and, indeed, it may have happened more than
once. But which ship it was on l cannot tell
| However, in one, at least of the great frigate-
duels with the English, in which the Navy was
really baptized, it happened that rOund-shot
from the enemy entered one of our ports square,
and took right down the officer of the gun him