Nolan wore his uniform, but with plain buttons. He always had a sentry before his door, but the men were as good to him as his sentence permitted. No mess wanted to have him with them too steadily because they could never talk about home matters when he was present—more than half the talk men liked to have at sea. They took turns inviting him to dinner, and the captain always asked him on Mondays. He could have any books or papers not printed in America. Newspapers having any mention of America had to be gone over and the allusions cut out. He used to join the men as they were reading on deck and take his turn in reading aloud.
Once when they were cruising around the Cape of Good Hope, somebody got hold of Scott’s “Lay of the Last Minstrel,” which was then new and famous. Nolan was reading to the others when he came to this passage:
“Breathes there the man with soul so dead
Who never to himself hath said,
This is my own, my native land!
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;
For him no minstrel raptures swell;