FullReads

“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 favor 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 those 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, Danforth, 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 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.'”