No
matter what happens to you, no matter who flatters you or who abuses
you, never look at another flag, never let a night pass but you pray
God to bless that flag. Remember, boy, that behind all these men you
have to do with, behind officers, and government, and people even,
there is the Country Herself, your Country, and that you belong to Her
as you belong to your own mother. Stand by Her, boy, as you would
stand by your mother, if those devils there had got hold of her
to-day!"
I was frightened to death by his, calm, hard passion; but I blundered
out that I would, by all that was holy, and that I had never thought
of doing anything else. He hardly seemed to hear me; but he did,
almost in a whisper, say: "O, if anybody had said so to me when I was
of your age!"
I think it was this half-confidence of his, which I never abused, for
I never told this story till now, which afterward made us great
friends. He was very kind to me. Often he sat up, or even got up, at
night, to walk the deck with me, when it was my watch. He explained to
me a great deal of my mathematics, and I owe to him my taste for
mathematics. He lent me books, and helped me about my reading. He
never alluded so directly to his story again; but from one and another
officer I have learned, in thirty years, what I am telling. When we
parted from him in St. Thomas harbour, at the end of our cruise, I was
more sorry than I can tell. I was very glad to meet him again in 1830;
and later in life, when I thought I had some influence in Washington,
I moved heaven and earth to have him discharged.
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