ntury 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 ble