e bade me take down his beautiful map and draw
them in as I best could with my pencil. He was wild with delight about
Texas, told me how his brother died there; he had marked a gold cross
where he supposed his brother's grave was; and he had guessed at Texas.
Then he was delighted as he saw California and Oregon;--that, he said,
he had suspected partly, because he had never been permitted to land on
that shore, though the ships were there so much. 'And the men,' said he,
laughing, 'brought off a good deal besides furs.' Then he went
back--heavens, how far!--to ask about the Chesapeake, and what was done
to Barron for surrendering her to the Leopard, and whether Burr ever
tried again,--and he ground his teeth with the only passion he showed.
But in a moment that was over, and he said, 'God forgive me, for I am
sure I forgive him.' Then he asked about the old war,--told me the true
story of his serving the gun the day we took the Java,--asked about dear
old David Porter, as he called him. Then he settled down more quietly,
and very happily, to hear me tell in an hour the history of fifty years.

"How I wished it had been somebody who knew something! But I did as well
as I could. I told him of the English war. I told him about Fulton and
the steamboat beginning. I told him about old Scott, and Jackson; told
him all I could think about the Mississippi, and New Orleans, and Texas,
and his own old Kentucky. And do you think he asked who was in command
of the "Legion of the West." I told him it was a very gallant officer,
named Grant, and that, by our last news, he was about to establish his
head-quarters at Vicksburg. Then, 'Where was Vicksburg?' I worked that
out on the map; it was about a hundred miles, more or less, above his
old Fort Adams; and I thought Fort Adams must be a ruin now. 'It must be
at old Vicks's plantation,' said he; 'well, that is a change!'

"I tell you, Ingham, it was a hard thing to condense the history of half
a century into that talk with a sick man. And I do not now know what I
told him,--of emigration, and the means of it,--of steamboats and
railroads and telegraphs,--of inventions and books and literature,--of
the colleges and West Point and the Naval School,--but with the queerest
interruptions that ever you heard. You see it was Robinson Crusoe asking
all the accumulated questions of fifty-six years:

"I remember he asked, all of a sudden, who was President now; and when I
told him, he asked if