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 of 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 Vick'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 Old Abe was General Benjamin Lincoln's
son. He said he met old General Lincoln, when he was quite a boy
himself, at some Indian treaty. I said no, that Old Abe was a
Kentuckian like himself, but I could not tell him of what family;
he had worked up from the ranks. 'Good for him!' cried Nolan; 'I am
glad of that. As I have brooded and wondered, I have thought our
danger was in keeping up those regular successions