Tombstone epitaph., 1917-06-17
THIRD INSTAlIMENT,

'T am showing them how we do this 'n the artillery. sir"
 And this is part of the story where all the legends agree; that the commo. lore said:
 "1 see you do, and thank you, sir md I shall never forget this day, sir. >nd you never shah. sir"
 And after the whole thins was over, nd he had the Englishman's sword, n the midst of the state and ceremony # the Quarterdeck. he said:
 "Where Is Mir. Nolan? Ask Mir. No m to come here"
 And when Nolan came. the captain said:
 'Mr. Nolan. we are all very grateful o you today; you are one of us today {; ou will be named in the dispatches" {"
 And then the old man took of his wn sword of ceremony, and gave 1t to solan, and made him put 1t on. The aan told me this who saw It. Nolan ried like a baby. and well he might. Ie had not worn a sword since that .nfernal day at Fort Adams. But al- gays afterward, on occasions of cere- ,ony. he wore that quaint old French word of the commodore's.
 The captain did mention him in the dispatches. It was always said he 1sked that he might be pardoned. He vrote a special letter to the secretary If war. But nothing ever came of 1t. As said, that was about the time when they began to ignore the whole transaction at Washington, and when Nolan's Imprisonment began to carry itself on because there was nobody to ytop 1t without any new orders from iome.
 have heard 1t said that he was with Porter when he took possession of the Nukahiwa islands. Not this Porter. you know. but old Porter. his father. Essex Porter, that is, the old Essex Porter, not this Essex. As an artil- fiery officer. who had seen service in the West, Nolan knew more about for tiflcations, embrasures, ravelines stockades, and all that, than any of them did and he worked with a right good will in fixing that battery all right. I have always thought 1t was a pity Porter did not leave him in command there with Gamble. That would have settled all the question about his punishment. We should have kept the islands, and at this mo- ment we should have one station In the Pacific ocean. Our French friends, too, when they wanted this little wa tering place, would have found 1t was pre-occupied. But Madison and the yirginians, of course, flung all that away.
 All that was near fifty years ago. If Nolan was thirty then. he must have been near eighty when he died. He looked sixty when he was forty. But he never seemed to me to change @ hair afterward. As I imagine his life, from what have seen and heard of it, he must have been in every sea, and yet almost never on land. He must have known in a formal way, more officers in our service than any man living knows. He told me once, with a grave smile, that no man in the world lived so methodical a life as he. You know the boys say I am the Iron Mask, and you know how busy he was" He said 1t did not do for anyone to try to read all the time. more, than to do anything else all the time 1: but that he read just five hours day. ''Then," he said. .T keep up my note books. writing in them at such and such hours from what I have been reading; and I include in them my scrapbooks." These were very curious indeed. He had six or eight, of differ- ent subjects. There was one of his tory. one of natural science. one which he called odds and Ends" But they were not merely books of extracts from newspapers. They had bits of plants and ribbons, shells tied on. and carved scraps of bone and wood, which he had taught the men to cut for him. and they were beautifully illustrated. He drew admirably. He had some of the funniest drawings there, and some of the most pathetic, that have ever seen in my life. I wonder who will have Nolan's scrapbooks.
 Well, he said his reading and his notes were his profession, and that they took five hours and two hours respectively of each day. Then" said he, "every man should have a d. version as well as a profession. My natural history is my diversion" That took two hours a day more. The men used to bring him. birds and fish, but on a long cruise he had to satisfy him. self with centipedes and cockroaches and such small game. He was the only naturalist I ever met who knew any thing about the habits of the house fly a,.1 the mosquito. All those people can .eil you whether they are Lepi- doptere or Steptopotera; but as for telling how you can get rid of them, or how thSv get away from you when you strike tLem, why. Linnaeus knew as little of that as John Foy, the idiot, did. These nine Yours made Nolan's regular daily ~occulation-" The rest of the time he talked v walked. Till he grew very old. he wenS aloft a great deal. He always kept up h.s exercise and I never heard that he was aL If any other man was ;ll, he was the kind es. r-rse in the world; and he lnew