' Then he asked about the old war,--told me the true
story of his serving the gun the day we took the Java,--asked about dear
old David Porter, as he called him. Then he settled down more quietly,
and very happily, to hear me tell in an hour the history of fifty years.
"How I wished it had been somebody who knew something! But I did as well
as I could. I told him of the English war. I told him about Fulton and
the steamboat beginning. I told him about old Scott, and Jackson; told
him all I could think about the Mississippi, and New Orleans, and Texas,
and his own old Kentucky. And do you think he asked who was in command
of the "Legion of the West." I told him it was a very gallant officer,
named Grant, and that, by our last news, he was about to establish his
head-quarters at Vicksburg. Then, 'Where was Vicksburg?' I worked that
out on the map; it was about a hundred miles, more or less, above his
old Fort Adams; and I thought Fort Adams must be a ruin now. 'It must be
at old Vicks's plantation,' said he; 'well, that is a change!'
"I tell you, Ingham, it was a hard thing to condense the history of half
a century into that talk with a sick man.
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