Ocean. Our French friends, too, when they wanted this little
watering-place, would have found it was preoccupied. But Madison and the
Virginians, of course, flung all that away.

All that was near fifty years ago. If Nolan was thirty then, he must
have been near eighty when he died. He looked sixty when he was forty.
But he never seemed to me to change a hair afterwards. As I imagine his
life, from what I have seen and heard of it, he must have been in every
sea, and yet almost never on land. He must have known, in a formal way,
more officers in our service than any man living knows. He told me once,
with a grave smile, that no man in the world lived so methodical a life
as he. "You know the boys say I am the Iron Mask, and you know how busy
he was." He said it did not do for any one to try to read all the time,
more than to do anything else all the time; and that he used to read
just five hours a day. "Then," he said, "I keep up my notebooks, writing
in them at such and such hours from what I have been reading; and I
include in these my scrap-books." These were very curious indeed. He had
six or eight, of different subjects. There was one of History, one of
Natural Science, one which he called "Odds and Ends." But they were not
merely books of extracts from newspapers. They had bits of plants and
ribbons, shells tied on, and carved scraps of bone and wood, which he
had taught the men to cut for him, and they were beautifully
illustrated. He drew admirably. He had some of the funniest drawings
there, and some of the most pathetic, that I have ever seen in my life.
I wonder who will have Nolan's scrapbooks.

Well, he said his reading and his notes were his profession, and that
they took five hours and two hours respectively of each day. "Then,"
said he, "every man should have a diversion as well as a profession. My
Natural History is my diversion." That took two hours a day more. The