Now let us sing, Long live the king!
And Gilpin long live he;
And, when he next doth ride abroad,
May I be there to see!
--WILLIAM COWPER
VIII
THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY
I suppose that very few casual readers of the _New York Herald_ of
August 13, 1863, observed, in an obscure corner, among the "Deaths,"
the announcement,--
"NOLAN. Died, on board U.S. Corvette _Levant_, Lat. 2 deg. 11'
S., Long. 131 deg. W., on the 11th of May, PHILIP NOLAN."
I happened to observe it, because I was stranded at the old Mission
House 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.
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