the West," as the Western division of our army was then called. When
Aaron Burr made his first dashing expedition down to New Orleans in
1805, at Fort Massac, or somewhere above on the river, he met, as the
devil would have it, this gay, dashing, bright young fellow; at some
dinner party, I think. Burr marked him, talked to him, walked with him,
took him a day or two's voyage in his flatboat, and, in short,
fascinated him. For the next year, barrack life was very tame to poor
Nolan. He occasionally availed himself of the permission the great man
had given him to write to him. Long, high-worded, stilted letters the
poor boy wrote and rewrote and copied. But never a line did he have in
reply from the gay deceiver. The other boys in the garrison sneered at
him, because he sacrificed in this unrequited affection for a
politician the time which they devoted to Monongahela, hazard, and
high-low-jack. But one day Nolan had his revenge. This time Burr came
down the river, not as an attorney seeking a place for his office, but
as a disguised conquerer. He had defeated I know not how many district
attorneys; he had dined at I know not how many public dinners; he had
been heralded in I don't know how many "Weekly Arguses," and it was
rumored that he had an army behind him and an empire before him. It was
a great day--his arrival--to poor Nolan. Burr had not been at the fort
an hour before he sent for him. That evening he asked Nolan to take him
out in his skiff, to show him a canebrake or a cottonwood tree, as he
said--really to seduce him; and by the time the sail was over, Nolan
was enlisted body and soul. From that time, though he did not yet know
it, he lived as A MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY.
What Burr meant to do I know no more than you. It is none of our
business just now. Only, when the grand catastrophe came, and Jefferson
and the House of Virginia of that day undertook to break on the wheel
all the possible Clarences of the then House of York, by the great
treason trial at Richmond, some of the lesser fry in that distant
Mississippi Valley, which was farther from us than Puget's Sound is to-
day, introduced the like novelty on their provincial stage; and, to
while away the monotony of the summer at Fort Adams, got up, for
"spectacles," a string of court-martials on the officers there. One and
another of the colonels and majors were tried, and, to fill out the
list, little Nolan, against whom, Heaven knows, there was evidence
enough--that he was sick of the service, had been willing to be false
to it, and would have obeyed any order to march any-whither with any
one who would follow him had the order been signed, "By command of His
Exc. A. Burr." The courts dragged on. The big flies escaped--rightly
for all I know. Nolan was proved guilty enough, as I say; yet you and I
would never have heard of him, but that, when the president of the
court asked him at the close whether he wished to say anything to show
that he had always been faithful to the United States, he cried out, in
a fit of frenzy:--"Damn the United States! I wish I may never hear of
the United States again!"
I suppose he did not know how the words shocked old Colonel Morgan, who
was holding the court. He, on his part, had grown up in the West of
those days, in the midst of "Spanish plot," "Orleans plot," and all the
rest. He had spent half his youth with an older brother, hunting horses
in Texas; and, in a word, to him "United States" was scarcely a
reality. Yet he had been fed by "United States" for all the years since
he had been in the army. He had sworn on his faith as a Christian to be
true to "United States." It was "United States" which gave him the
uniform he wore, and the sword by his side. I do not excuse Nolan; I
only explain to the reader why he damned his country, and wished he
might never hear her name again.
He never did hear her name but once again. From that moment, September
23, 1807, till the day he died, May 11, 1863, he never heard her name
again. For that half century and more he was a man without a country.
Old Morgan, as I said, was terribly shocked. He called the court into
his private room, and returned in fifteen minutes, with a face like a
sheet, to say:--
"Prisoner, hear the sentence of the court! The court decides, subject
to the approval of the president, that you never hear the name of the
United States again."
Nolan laughed. But nobody else laughed. Old Morgan was too solemn, and
the whole room was hushed dead as night for a minute. Even Nolan lost
his swagger in a moment. Then Morgan added:--
"Mr. Marshal, take the prisoner to Orleans in an armed boat, and
deliver him to the naval commander there."
The marshal gave his orders and the prisoner was taken out of court.
"Mr. Marshal," continued old Morgan, "see that no one mentions the
United States to the prisoner. Mr. Marshal, make my respects to
Lieutenant Mitchell at Orleans, and request him to order that no one
shall mention the United States to the prisoner while he is on board
ship. You will receive your written orders from the officer on duty
here this evening. The court is adjourned without day."
The plan then adopted was substantially the same which was necessarily
followed ever after. The Secretary of the Navy was requested to put
Nolan on board a government vessel bound on a long cruise, and to
direct that he should be only so far confined there as to make it
certain that he never saw or heard of the country. One afternoon a lot
of the men sat on the deck smoking and reading aloud. Well, so it
happened that in his turn Nolan took the book and read to the others;
and he read very well. Nobody in the circle knew a line of the poem,
only it was all magic and Border chivalry, and was ten thousand years
ago. Poor Nolan read steadily through the fifth canto without a thought
of what was coming:--
"Breathes there the man with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said,"--
It seems impossible to us that anybody ever heard this for the first
time; but all these fellows did then, and poor Nolan himself went on,
still unconsciously or mechanically:--
"This is my own, my native land!"
Then they all saw something was to pay; but he expected to get through,
I suppose, turned a little pale, but plunged on:--
"Whose heart hath ne'er within him burned
As home his footsteps he hath turned
From wandering on a foreign strand?--
If such there breathe, go, mark him well,"--
By this time the men were all beside themselves, wishing there was any
way to make him turn over two pages; but he had not quite presence of
mind for that; he gagged a little, colored crimson, and staggered on:--
"For him no minstrel raptures swell;
High though his titles, proud his name,
Boundless his wealth as wish can claim,
Despite these titles, power, and pelf,
The wretch, concentred all in self,"--
and here the poor fellow choked, could not go on, but started up, swung
the book into the sea, vanished into his stateroom, and we did not see
him for two months again. He never entered in with the young men
exactly as a companion again; but generally he had the nervous, tired
look of a heart-wounded man.
And when Nolan died, there was found in his Bible 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
some one 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."
THE EXECUTION OF RODRIGUEZ
From "Cuba in War Time," with the author's permission
BY RICHARD HARDING DAVIS
Adolfo Rodriguez was the only son of a Cuban farmer. When the
revolution broke out, young Rodriguez joined the insurgents, leaving
his father and mother and two sisters at the farm. He was taken by the
Spanish, was tried by a military court for bearing arms against the
government, and sentenced to be shot by a fusillade some morning before
sunrise. His execution took place a half mile distant from the city, on
the great plain that stretches from the forts out to the hills, beyond
which Rodriguez had lived for nineteen years.
There had been a full moon the night preceding the execution, and when
the squad of soldiers marched out from town, it was still shining
brightly through the mists. It lighted a plain two miles in extent
broken by ridges and gullies and covered with thick, high grass and
with bunches of cactus and palmetto.
The execution was quickly finished with rough, and, but for one
frightful blunder, with merciful swiftness. The crowd fell back when it
came to the square of soldiery, and the condemned man, the priests, and
the firing squad of six young volunteers passed in and the lines closed
behind them.
Rodriguez bent and kissed the cross which the priest held up before
him. He then walked to where the officer directed him to stand, and
turned his back to the square and faced the hills and the road across
them which led to his father's farm. As the officer gave the first
command he straightened himself as far as the cords would allow, and
held up his head and fixed his eyes immovably on the morning light
which had just begun to show above the hills.
The officer had given the order, the men had raised their pieces, and
the condemned man had heard the clicks of the triggers as they were
pulled back, and he had not moved. And then happened one of the most
cruelly refined, though unintentional, acts of torture that one can
very well imagine. As the officer slowly raised his sword, preparatory
to giving the signal, one of the mounted officers rode up to him and
pointed out silently--the firing squad were so placed that when they
fired they would shoot several of the soldiers stationed on the extreme
end of the square.
Their captain motioned his men to lower their pieces, and then walked
across the grass and laid his hand on the shoulder of the waiting
prisoner. It is not pleasant to think what that shock must have been.
The man had steeled himself to receive a volley of bullets in the back.
He believed that in the next instant he would be in another world; he
had heard the command given, had heard the click of the Mausers as the
locks caught--and then, at that supreme moment, a human hand had been
laid upon his shoulder and a voice spoke in his ear.
You would expect that any man who had been snatched back to life in
such a fashion would start and tremble at the reprieve, or would break
down altogether, but this boy turned his head steadily, and followed
with his eyes the direction of the officer's sword, then nodded his
head gravely, and with his shoulders squared, took up a new position,
straightened his back again, and once more held himself erect. As an
exhibition of self-control this should surely rank above feats of
heroism performed in battle, where there are thousands of comrades to
give inspiration. This man was alone, in sight of the hills he knew,
with only enemies about him, with no source to draw on for strength but
that which lay within himself.
The officer of the firing squad, mortified by his blunder, hastily
whipped up his sword, the men once more leveled their rifles, the sword
rose, dropped, and the men fired. At the report the Cuban's head
snapped back almost between his shoulders, but his body fell slowly, as
though some one had pushed him gently forward from behind and he had
stumbled. He sank on his side in the wet grass without a struggle or
sound, and did not move again.
At that moment the sun, which had shown some promise of its coming in
the glow above the hills, shot up suddenly from behind them in all the
splendor of the tropics, a fierce, red disk of heat, and filled the air
with warmth and light.
THE INFORMAL DISCUSSION
THE FLOOD OF BOOKS
From "Essays in Application," with the permission of Charles Scribner's
Sons, New York, publishers.
BY HENRY VAN DYKE
There is the highest authority for believing that a man's life, even
though he be an author, consists not in the abundance of things that he
possesses. Rather is its real value to be sought in the quality of the
ideas and feelings that possess him, and in the effort to embody them
in his work.
The work is the great thing. The delight of clear and steady thought,
of free and vivid imagination, of pure and strong emotion; the
fascination of searching for the right words, which sometimes come in
shoals like herring, so that the net can hardly contain them, and at
other times are more shy and fugacious than the wary trout which refuse
to be lured from their hiding places; the pleasure of putting the fit
phrase in the proper place, of making a conception stand out plain and
firm with no more and no less than is needed for its expression, of
doing justice to an imaginary character so that it shall have its own
life and significance in the world of fiction, of working a plot or an
argument clean through to its inevitable close: these inward and
unpurchasable joys are the best wages of the men and women who write.
What more will they get? Well, unless history forgets to repeat itself,
their additional wages, their personal dividends under the profit-
sharing system, so to speak, will be various. Some will probably get
more than they deserve, others less.
The next best thing to the joy of work is the winning of gentle readers
and friends who find some good in your book, and are grateful for it,
and think kindly of you for writing it.
The next best thing to that is the recognition, on the part of people
who know, that your work is well done, and of fine quality. That is
called fame, or glory, and the writer who professes to care nothing for
it is probably deceiving himself, or else his liver is out of order.
Real reputation, even of a modest kind and of a brief duration, is a
good thing; an author ought to be able to be happy without it, but
happier with it.
EFFECTIVENESS IN SPEAKING
From the Introduction to "The World's Famous Orations," with the
permission of Funk and Wagnalls Company, New York and London,
publishers.
BY WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYAN
While it is absolutely necessary for the orator to master his subject
and to speak with earnestness, his speech can be made more effective by
the addition of clearness, brevity and apt illustrations.
Clearness of statement is of very great importance. It is not
sufficient to say that there are certain self-evident truths; it is
more accurate to say that all truth is self-evident. Because truth is
self-evident, the best service that one can render a truth is to state
it so clearly that it can be comprehended, needs no argument in its
support. In debate, therefore, one's first effort should be to state
his own side so clearly and concisely as to make the principles
involved easily understood. His second object should be so to divest
his opponent's argument of useless verbiage as to make it stand forth
clearly; for as truth is self-evident, so error bears upon its face its
own condemnation. Error needs only to be exposed to be overthrown.
Brevity of statement also contributes to the force of a speaker. It is
possible so to enfold a truth in long-drawn-out sentences as
practically to conceal it. The epigram is powerful because it is full
of meat and short enough to be remembered. To know when to stop is
almost as important as to know where to begin and how to proceed. The
ability to condense great thoughts into small words and brief sentences
is an attribute of genius. Often one lays down a book with the feeling
that the author has "said nothing with elaboration," while in perusing
another book one finds a whole sermon in a single sentence, or an
unanswerable argument couched in a well-turned phrase.
The interrogatory is frequently employed by the orator, and when wisely
used is irresistible. What dynamic power for instance, there is in that
question propounded by Christ, "What shall it profit a man if he gain
the whole world and lose his own soul?" Volumes could not have
presented so effectively the truth that he sought to impress upon his
hearers.
The illustration has no unimportant place in the equipment of the
orator. We understand a thing more easily when we know that it is like
something which we have already seen. Illustrations may be drawn from
two sources--nature and literature--and of the two, those from nature
have the greater weight. All learning is valuable; all history is
useful. By knowing what has been we can better judge the future; by
knowing how men have acted heretofore we can understand how they will
act again in similar circumstances. But people know nature better than
they know books, and the illustrations drawn from everyday life are the
most effective.
If the orator can seize upon something within the sight or hearing of
his audience,--something that comes to his notice at the moment and as
if not thought of before,--it will add to the effectiveness of the
illustration. For instance, Paul's speech to the Athenians derived a
large part of its strength from the fact that he called attention to an
altar near by, erected "to the Unknown God," and then proceeded to
declare unto them the God whom they ignorantly worshiped.
Abraham Lincoln used scripture quotations very frequently and very
powerfully. Probably no Bible quotation, or, for that matter, no
quotation from any book ever has had more influence upon a people than
the famous quotation made by Lincoln in his Springfield speech of
1858,--"A house divided against itself cannot stand." It is said that
he had searched for some time for a phrase which would present in the
strongest possible way the proposition he intended to advance--namely,
that the nation could not endure half slave and half free.
It is a compliment to a public speaker that the audience should discuss
what he says rather than his manner of saying it; more complimentary
that they should remember his arguments, than that they should praise
his rhetoric. The orator should seek to conceal himself behind his
subject. If he presents himself in every speech he is sure to become
monotonous, if not offensive. If, however, he focuses attention upon
his subject, he can find an infinite number of themes and, therefore,
give variety to his speech.
BOOKS, LITERATURE, AND THE PEOPLE
From "Essays in Application," with the permission of Charles Scribner's
Sons, New York, publishers.
BY HENRY VAN DYKE
Every one knows what books are. But what is literature? It is the ark
on the flood. It is the light on the candlestick. It is the flower
among the leaves; the consummation of the plant's vitality, the crown
of its beauty, and the treasure house of its seeds. It is hard to
define, easy to describe.
Literature is made up of those writings which translate the inner
meanings of nature and life, in language of distinction and charm,
touched with the personality of the author, into artistic forms of
permanent interest. The best literature, then, is that which has the
deepest significance, the most lucid style, the most vivid
individuality, and the most enduring form.
On the last point contemporary judgment is but guess-work, but on the
three other points it should not be impossible to form, nor improper to
express, a definite opinion.
Literature has its permanent marks. It is a connected growth, and its
life history is unbroken. Masterpieces have never been produced by men
who have had no masters. Reverence for good work is the foundation of
literary character. The refusal to praise bad work, or to imitate it,
is an author's personal chastity.
Good work is the most honorable and lasting thing in the world. Four
elements enter into good work in literature:--An original impulse--not
necessarily a new idea, but a new sense of the value of an idea. A
first-hand study of the subject and the material. A patient, joyful,
unsparing labor for the perfection of form. A human aim--to cheer,
console, purify, or ennoble the life of the people. Without this aim
literature has never sent an arrow close to the mark. It is only by
good work that men of letters can justify their right to a place in the
world. The father of Thomas Carlyle was a stonemason, whose walls stood
true and needed no rebuilding. Carlyle's prayer was, "Let me write my
books as he built his houses."
EDUCATION FOR BUSINESS
From an address before the New York Chamber of Commerce, 1890
BY CHARLES WILLIAM ELIOT
Before we can talk together to advantage about the value of education
in business, we ought to come to a common understanding about the sort
of education we mean and the sort of business.
We must not think of the liberal education of to-day as dealing with a
dead past--with dead languages, buried peoples, exploded philosophies;
on the contrary, everything which universities now teach is quick with
life and capable of application to modern uses. They teach indeed the
languages and literature of Judea, Greece, and Rome; but it is because
those literatures are instinct with eternal life. They teach
mathematics, but it is mathematics mostly created within the lifetime
of the older men here present. In teaching English, French, and German,
they are teaching the modern vehicles of all learning--just what Latin
was in medieval times. As to history, political science, and natural
science, the subjects, and all the methods by which they are taught,
may properly be said to be new within a century. Liberal education is
not to be justly regarded as something dry, withered, and effete; it is
as full of sap as the cedars of Lebanon.
And what sort of business do we mean? Surely the larger sorts of
legitimate and honorable business; that business which is of advantage
both to buyer and seller, and to producer, distributor, and consumer
alike, whether individuals or nations, which makes common some useful
thing which has been rare, or makes accessible to the masses good
things which have been within reach only of the few--I wish I could say
simply which make dear things cheap; but recent political connotations
of the word cheap forbid. We mean that great art of production and
exchange which through the centuries has increased human comfort,
cherished peace, fostered the fine arts, developed the pregnant
principle of associated action, and promoted both public security and
public liberty.
With this understanding of what we mean by education on the one hand
and business on the other, let us see if there can be any doubt as to
the nature of the relations between them. The business man in large
affairs requires keen observation, a quick mental grasp of new
subjects, and a wide range of knowledge. Whence come these powers and
attainments--either to the educated or to the uneducated--save through
practice and study? But education is only early systematic practice and
study under guidance. The object of all good education is to develop
just these powers--accuracy in observation, quickness and certainty in
seizing upon the main points of new subjects, and discrimination in
separating the trivial from the important in great masses of facts.
This is what liberal education does for the physician, the lawyer, the
minister, and the scientist. This is what it can do also for the man of
business; to give a mental power is one of the main ends of the higher
education. Is not active business a field in which mental power finds
full play? Again, education imparts knowledge, and who has greater need
to know economics, history, and natural science than the man of large
business?
Further, liberal education develops a sense of right, duty, and honor;
and more and more, in the modern world, large business rests on
rectitude and honor, as well as on good judgment. Education does this
through the contemplation and study of the moral ideals of our race;
not in drowsiness or dreaminess or in mere vague enjoyment of poetic
and religious abstractions, but in the resolute purpose to apply
spiritual ideals to actual life. The true university fosters ideals,
but always to urge that they be put into practice in the real world.
When the universities hold up before their youth the great Semitic
ideals which were embodied in the Decalogue, they mean that those
ideals should be applied in politics. When they teach their young men
that Asiatic ideal of unknown antiquity, the Golden Rule, they mean
that their disciples shall apply it to business; when they inculcate
that comprehensive maxim of Christian ethics, "Ye are all members of
one another," they mean that this moral principle is applicable to all
human relations, whether between individuals, families, states, or
nations.
THE BEGINNINGS OF AMERICAN ORATORY