in Mackinaw, waiting for a Lake Superior steamer which did not
choose to come, and I was devouring to the very stubble all the
current literature I could get hold of, even down to the deaths and
marriages in the _Herald_. My memory for names and people is good, and
the reader will see, as he goes on, that I had reason enough to
remember Philip Nolan. There are hundreds of readers who would have
paused at that announcement, if the officer of the _Levant_ who
reported it had chosen to make it thus: "Died May 11th, THE MAN
WITHOUT A COUNTRY." For it was as "The Man without a Country" that
poor Philip Nolan had generally been known by the officers who had him
in charge during some fifty years, as, indeed, by all the men who
sailed under them. I dare say there is many a man who has taken wine
with him once a fortnight, in a three years' cruise, who never knew
that his name was "Nolan," or whether the poor wretch had any name at
all.

There can now be no possible harm in telling this poor creature's
story. Reason enough there has been till now ever since Madison's
administration went out in 1817, for very strict secrecy, the secrecy
of honour itself, among the gentlemen of the navy who have had Nolan
in successive charge. And certainly it speaks well for the _esprit de
corps_ of the profession, and the personal honour of its members, that
to the press this man's story has been wholly unknown--and, I think,
to the country at large also. I have reason to think, from some
investigations I made in the Naval Archives when I was attached to the
Bureau of Construction, that every official report relating to him was
burned when Ross burned the public buildings at Washington. One of the
Tuckers, or possibly one of the Watsons, had Nolan in charge at the
end of the war; and when, on returning from his cruise, he reported at
Washington to one of the Crowninshields--who was in the Navy
Department when he came home--he found that the Department ignored the
whole business. Whether they really knew nothing about it, or whether
it was a "_Non mi ricordo_," determined on as a piece of policy I do
not know. But this I do know, that since 1817, and possibly before, no
naval officer has mentioned Nolan in his report of a cruise.

But, as I say, there is no need for secrecy any longer. And now the
poor creature is dead, it seems to me worth while to tell a little of
his story, by way of showing young Americans of to-day what it is to
be A MAN W