" I suppose our fathers learned such things: but
the old fellow had patched in Texas, too; he had carried his
western boundary all the way to the Pacific, but on that
shore he had defined nothing.
"O Captain," he said, "I know I am dying. I cannot get home.
Surely you will tell me something now?--Stop! stop! Do not
speak till I say what I am sure you know, that there is not
in this ship, that there is not in America--God bless
her!--a more loyal man than I. There cannot be a man who
loves the old flag as I do, or prays for it as I do, or
hopes for it as I do. There are thirty-four stars in it now,
Danforth. I thank God for that, though I do not know what
their names are. There has never been one taken away: I
thank God for that. I know by that that there has never been
any successful Burr, O Danforth, Danforth," he sighed out,
"how like a wretched night's dream a boy's idea of personal
fame or of separate sovereignty seems; when one looks back
on it after such a life as mine! But tell me--tell me
something--tell me everything, Danforth, before I die!"
Ingham, I swear to you that I felt like a monster that I had
not told him everything before. Danger or no danger,
delicacy or no delicacy, who was I, that I should have been
acting the tyrant all this time over this dear, sainted old
man, who had years ago expiated, in his whole manhood's
life, the madness of a boy's treason? "Mr.
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