The future author and preacher was graduated from Harvard with honors when he was seventeen years old. He assisted his father in newspaper work, and was able to write editorials, keep the books, or set type, as the occasion required. He afterwards studied theology.
His first pastorate was at Worcester, Mass. He remained there for ten years. He then settled in Boston. He was with the Massachusetts Rifle Corps when the Civil War broke out, and it was upon an incident of that war that he founded his story of “The Man without a Country.” This is one of the strongest stories of patriotism ever written, and has been reprinted in several languages.
For many years Dr. Hale has been pastor of the South Congregational Church in Boston. He has written many books; among them the best known are “Ten Times One is Ten” and “In His Name.”
One can hardly imagine a busier life than he leads. His daily tasks consist in aiding public and private charities, lecturing, editing, writing, and preparing his sermons.
He was once asked how he was able to accomplish so much, and he replied: “If you are working with Aladdin’s lamp, or with Monte Cristo’s treasures, you are not apt to think you will fail. Far less is your risk with the omnipotence of the Lord God behind you.”
Philip Nolan was as fine a young officer as there was in the “Legion of the West,” as the Western division of our army was then called. When Aaron Burr made his first dashing expedition down to New Orleans, or somewhere above on the river, he met 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, and led him to turn traitor to his country.
Nolan was proved guilty; yet you and I would never have heard of him, reader, 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: “Curse 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. Half the officers who sat in it had served through the Revolution, and their lives, not to say their necks, had been risked for the very idea which he so cavalierly cursed in his madness.
Morgan 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.