Book Excerpt: that he hadan empire before him. At that time the youngsters all envied him. Burrhad not been talking twenty minutes with the commander before he askedhim to send for Lieutenant Nolan. Then after a little talk he askedNolan if he could show him something of the great river and the plansfor the new post. He asked Nolan to take him out in his skiff to showhim a canebrake or a cotton-wood tree, as he said,--really to seducehim; and by the time the sail was over, Nolan was enlisted body andsoul. From that time, though he did not yet know it, he lived as A MANWITHOUT A COUNTRY.What Burr meant to do I know no more than you, dear reader. It is noneof our business just now. Only, when the grand catastrophe came, andJefferson and the House of Virginia of that day undertook to break onthe wheel all the possible Clarences of the then House of York, by thegreat treason trial at Richmond, some of the lesser fry in that distantMississippi Valley, which was farther from us than Puget's Sound isto-day, inRead More
