Middletown transcript., 1917-05-26
% Man Without
g A Country g
81 Eduord Everett Hale
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:

Dut ne naQ NOT quite presence OI mInu
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 can claim,
Despite these titles. power and pelf.
The wretch, concentered all m SELF
and here the poor fellow choked, could
not 60 on, but started up, swung the
book into the sea, vanished into his
stateroom, "and by Jove," said Phil
lips, 1--WE did not see him for two
months again. And I had to make up
some beggarly story to that English
surgeon why I did not return his Wal
ter Scott to him."
That story shows about the time
when Nolan's braggadocio must have
broken down. At first, they said, he
took a 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
his staterOom he never was the same
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 en-
tered in with the other young men ex-
actly as a companion again. He was
always shy afterward. when I knew
him, very seldom spoke, unless he
was spoken to, except to very few
friends. He lighted up occasionally,
remember late in his life hearing
him fairly eloquent on something
which had been suggested to him by
one Of Flechier's sermons, but gener-
ally he had the nervous, tired look of
a heart-wounded man.
When Captain Shaw was coming
home-if, as I say, 1t was Shaw-rath-
er to the surprise 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 tur
tie 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
homeward-bound men letters and pa
pers, 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 moment he was
going "home." But this was a dis
tinct evidence Of something he had 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 YES
sells, 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 a 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 great
ball on board the ship. How they
ever did it on board the Warren I 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
stateroom for something, and they
hated to do it without asking him to
the ball; so the captain said they
might ask him, If they would be re-
sponsible that he did not talk with
the wrong people, "who would give him
intelligence" So the dance went on,
the finest party that had ever been
known, I dare say; for never heard