oment 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 he a ruin now.
'It must be at old Vick's plantation,' at Walnut Hills, 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 in the first families.' Then I got talking about my
visit to Washington. I told him of meeting the Oregon Congressman,
Harding; I told him about the Smithsonian, and the Exploring Expedition;
I told him about the Capitol, and the statues for the pediment, and
Crawford's Liberty, and Greenough's Washington: Ingham, I