The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74,
December, 1863, by Various

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Title: The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863

Author: Various

Release Date: May 27, 2005 [EBook #15913]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY, VOL. ***

Produced by Cornell University, Joshua Hutchinson and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team.

THE

ATLANTIC MONTHLY.

A MAGAZINE OF LITERATURE, ART, AND POLITICS.

VOL. XII.--DECEMBER, 1863.--NO. LXXIV.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1863 by TICKNOR AND
FIELDS, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of
Massachusetts.

* * * * *

THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY.

I suppose that very few casual readers of the "New York Herald" of
August 13th 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 Mackinac, 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 enou