Famous Stories Every Child Should Know by Hamilton Wright Mabie (world best books to read TXT) 📖

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 headquarters 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 be 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
told him everything I could think of that would show the
grandeur of his country and its prosperity; but I could not
make up my mouth to tell him a word about this infernal
rebellion!

And he drank it in and enjoyed it as I cannot tell you. He
grew more and more silent, yet I never thought he was tired
or faint. I gave him a glass of water, but he just wet his
lips, and told me not to go away. Then he asked me to bring
the Presbyterian "Book of Public Prayer" which lay there,
and said, with a smile, that it would open at the right
place-and so it did. There was his double red mark down the
page; and I knelt down and read, and he repeated with me,
"For ourselves and our country, O gracious God, we thank
Thee, that, notwithstanding our manifold transgressions of
Thy holy laws, Thou hast continued to us Thy marvellous
kindness," and so to the end of that thanksgiving. Then he
turned to the end of the same book, and I read the words
more familiar to me: "Most heartily we beseech Thee with Thy
favour to behold and bless Thy servant, the President of the
United States, and all others in authority"-and the rest of
the Episcopal collect. "Danforth," said he "I have repeated
these prayers night and morning, it is now fifty-five
years." And then he said he would go to sleep. He bent me
down over him and kissed me; and he said, "Look in my Bible,
Captain, when I am gone." And I went away.

But I had no thought it was the end. I thought he was tired
and would sleep. I knew he was happy, and I wanted him to be
alone.

But in an hour, when the doctor went in gently, he found
Nolan had breathed his life away with a smile. He had
something pressed close to his lips. It was his father's
badge of the Order of the Cincinnati.

We looked in his Bible, and there was a slip of paper at the
place where he had marked the text-

"They desire a country, even a heavenly: wherefore God is
not ashamed to be called their God: for He hath prepared for
them a city."

On this slip of paper he had written:

"Bury me in the sea; it has been my home, and I love it. But
will not someone set up a stone for my memory at Fort Adams
or at Orleans, that my disgrace may not be more than I
ought to bear? Say on it:

" In Memory of

"PHILIP NOLAN,
" Lieutenant in the Army of the United States.

"He loved his country as no other man has
loved her; but no man deserved less at
her hands."


IX

THE NÜRNBERG STOVE


August lived in a little town called Hall. Hall is a favourite name for several towns in Austria and in Germany; but this one especial little Hall, in the Upper Innthal, is one of the most charming Old-World places that I know, and August for his part did not know any other. It has the green meadows and the great mountains all about it, and the gray-green glacier-fed water rushes by it. It has paved streets and enchanting little shops that have all latticed panes and iron gratings to them; it has a very grand old Gothic church, that has the noblest blendings of light and shadow, and marble tombs of dead knights, and a look of infinite strength and repose as a church should have. Then there is the Muntze Tower, black and white, rising out of greenery and looking down on a long wooden bridge and the broad rapid river; and there is an old schloss which has been made into a guard-house, with battlements and frescoes and heraldic devices in gold and colours, and a man-at-arms carved in stone standing life-size in his niche and bearing his date 1530. A little farther on, but close at hand, is a cloister with beautiful marble columns and tombs, and a colossal wood-carved Calvary, and beside that a small and very rich chapel: indeed, so full is the little town of the undisturbed past, that to walk in it is like opening a missal of the Middle Ages, all emblazoned and illuminated with saints and warriors, and it is so clean, and so still, and so noble, by reason of its monuments and its historic colour, that I marvel much no one has ever cared to sing its praises. The old pious heroic life of an age at once more restful and more brave than ours still leaves its spirit there, and then there is the girdle of the mountains all around, and that alone means strength, peace, majesty.

In this little town a few years ago August Strehla lived with his people in the stone-paved irregular square where the grand church stands.

He was a small boy of nine years at that time-a chubby-faced little man with rosy cheeks, big hazel eyes, and clusters of curls the brown of ripe nuts. His mother was dead, his father was poor, and there were many mouths at home to feed. In this country the winters are long and very cold, the whole land lies wrapped in snow for many months, and this night that he was trotting home, with a jug of beer in his numb red hands, was terribly cold and dreary. The good burghers of Hall had shut their double shutters, and the few lamps there were flickered dully behind their quaint, old-fashioned iron casings. The mountains indeed were beautiful, all snow-white under the stars that are so big in frost. Hardly anyone was astir; a few good souls wending home from vespers, a tired post-boy who blew a shrill blast from his tasseled horn as he pulled up his sledge before a hostelry, and little August hugging his jug of beer to his ragged sheepskin coat, were all who were abroad, for the snow fell heavily and the good folks of Hall go early to their beds. He could not run, or he would have spilled the beer; he was half frozen and a little frightened, but he kept up his courage by saying over and over again to himself, "I shall soon be at home with dear Hirschvogel."

He went on through the streets, past the stone man-at-arms of the guard-house, and so into the place where the great church was, and where near it stood his father Karl Strehla's house, with a sculptured Bethlehem over the doorway, and