The daily Alaskan., 1917-07-16
PART 1.

@0uILIP NOLAN was as fine a ! D young officer us there was In
 the Legion of the West" as
 the western division of our army was then called. When Aaron Burr made his first flashing expedition down to New Orleans in lS05 at Fort Massac or somewhere above on the river he met. as the devil would have 1t. this gay. dashing, bright young fel- low at some dinner party, l think. Burr marked him, talked to him, walk ed with him. took him day or twos voyage in his fathout and, in short, fascinated him. For the next year barruck life was very tame to poor Nolan. He occasionally availed of the permission the great man had given him to write to him. The other boys in the garrison snccrcd at him because he sacrificed in this uIrequited ahec- ton for a politician the time which they devoted ;o mOnonsahela, slcdSe and high-low-jucE. Bourbon. euchre and poker were still unknown. But one day Nolan had his revenge. This time Burr came down the river not as an attorney seeking place for his or fee. but as a disguised conqueror. It was rumorcd thut he had an army be- hind him and an empire before him. l. was a great day-his arrival-to poor Nolan. Burr had not been at the fort an hour before he sent for him. That evening he asked Nolan to take him out in his skin tO show him a cane brake or cottonwood tree. as he said really to &rduce him-and by the time the sail was over Nolan was enlisted body and soul From that time, though he did not yet know 1t, he lived aS "a man without country
 What Burr meant to do I know no more than you. dear reader. 1t is none of our business just now. Only when the grand catastrophe came some of the lesser fry in that distant Missis- sippi valley to while away the mono tony of the summer at Fort Adams got up for SpectaclCS string of court martials on the officers there. One md another of the COlonels and majors were tried. and. to fill Out the list little Nolan. against whom. heaven knows, there was evidence enOugh-that he was sick of the service, had been will ipg to be false to 1t and would have obeyed any order to march anywhither with any one who would follow him had the order only been signed, By command of His EXC. A. Burr" The courts dragged on. The big flies es- caped-rightly for all l know. Nolan was proved guilty enough as l say, yet YOU and 1 would never have heard of him, reader. but that, when the presi- dent of the court asked him at the close whether he wished to say any thing to show that he hud always been faithful to the United States he cried out in a it or frenzy:
 ID the United States. wish l may never hear of the United States again"
 I suppose he did not know how the words shocked old Colonel Morgan, who was holding the court. Nolan had grown up in the west of those days in the midst of Spanish plot "Orleans plot" and all the rest. He had been educated on plantation | where the finest company was Span | Ish officer or French merchant from ] Orleans. His education, such as It was. had been perfected in commercial | eXnedjtiOnS to Vera Cruz and l think ] he told me his father once hired an | Englishman to be a private tutor TOT a 1 winter on the plantation. He had spent l half his youth with an o!der brother | hunting horses in Texas. and. in word, to him "Unitcd States" was scarce Iv reality. Yet he bad been fed by United States" for all the years since he had been in the army. He had sworn on his faith as a Christian to be true to United States" It was Unit ed States which gave him the uniform he wore and the sword by his side. l do not excuse Nolan. only explain to II the reader why he damned his country and wished be might never hear her name again.
 He never did hear her name but once again. From that moment, Sept. 23. 1897. till the day he died. May Il. 1863, he never heard her name again. For that half century and more he was a man without q country.
 Old Morgan, as I said, was terribly
 shocked. He called the court into his
 private room and returned in fifteen
 minutes with q face like a sheet. to say:
 Prisoner. hear the sentence of the
 court. The court decides. subject to the approval of the president. that you
 never hear the name of the United
 States again
 Nolan laughed. But nobody else
 laughed. Old Morgan was too solemn,
 and the whole room was hushed dead
 as night for a minute. Even Nolan lost