men used to bring him birds and fish, but on a long cruise he had to
satisfy himself with centipedes and cockroaches and such small game. He
was the only naturalist I ever met who knew anything about the habits of
the house-fly and the mosquito. All those people can tell you whether
they are _Lepidoptera_ or _Steptopotera_; but as for telling how you can
get rid of them, or how they get away from you when you strike them,
--why Linnaeus knew as little of that as John Foy the idiot did. These
nine hours made Nolan's regular daily "occupation." The rest of the time
he talked or walked. Till he grew very old, he went aloft a great deal.
He always kept up his exercise; and I never heard that he was ill. If
any other man was ill, he was the kindest nurse in the world; and he
knew more than half the surgeons do. Then if anybody was sick or died,
or if the captain wanted him to, on any other occasion, he was always
ready to read prayers. I have said that he read beautifully.

My own acquaintance with Philip Nolan began six or eight years after the
English war, on my first voyage after I was appointed a midshipman. It
was in the first days after our Slave-Trade treaty, while the Reigning
House, which was still the House of Virginia, had still a sort of
sentimentalism about the suppression of the horrors of the Middle
Passage, and something was sometimes done that way. We were in the South
Atlantic on that business. From the time I joined, I believe I thought
Nolan was a sort of lay chaplain,--a chaplain with a blue coat. I never
asked about him. Everything in the ship was strange to me. I knew it was
green to ask questions, and I suppose I thought there was a
"Plain-Buttons" on every ship. We had him to dine in our mess once a
week, and the caution was given that on that day nothing was to be said
about home. But if they had told us not to say anything about the planet
Mars or the Book of Deuteronomy, I should not have asked why; there were
a great many things which seemed to me to have as little reason. I first