The Man Without a Country and Other Tales eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 288 pages of information about The Man Without a Country and Other Tales.

The Man Without a Country and Other Tales eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 288 pages of information about The Man Without a Country and Other Tales.
by any intelligent being who has any one of the five senses left him,—­by all rational men, that is, excepting the few eyeless deaf persons who have lost both taste and smell in some complete paralysis.  The use of Morse’s telegraph is by no means confined to the small clique who possess or who understand electrical batteries.  It is not only the torpedo or the Gymnotus electricus that can send us messages from the ocean.  Whales in the sea can telegraph as well as senators on land, if they will only note the difference between long spoutings and short ones.  And they can listen, too.  If they will only note the difference between long and short, the eel of Ocean’s bottom may feel on his slippery skin the smooth messages of our Presidents, and the catfish, in his darkness, look fearless on the secrets of a Queen.  Any beast, bird, fish, or insect, which can discriminate between long and short, may use the telegraph alphabet, if he have sense enough.  Any creature, which can hear, smell, taste, feel, or see, may take note of its signals, if he can understand them.  A tired listener at church, by properly varying his long yawns and his short ones, may express his opinion of the sermon to the opposite gallery before the sermon is done.  A dumb tobacconist may trade with his customers in an alphabet of short-sixes and long-nines.  A beleaguered Sebastopol may explain its wants to the relieving army beyond the line of the Chernaya, by the lispings of its short Paixhans and its long twenty-fours.

THE LAST VOYAGE OF THE RESOLUTE.

[I had some opportunities, which no other writer for the press had, I believe, of examining the Resolute on her return from that weird voyage which is the most remarkable in the history of the navies of the world.  And, as I know of no other printed record of the whole of that voyage than this, which was published in the Boston Daily Advertiser of June 11, 1856, I reprint it here.  Readers should remember that the English government abandoned all claim on the vessel; that the American government then bought her of the salvors, refitted her completely, and sent her to England as a present to the Queen.  The Queen visited the ship, and accepted the present in person.  The Resolute has never since been to sea.  I do not load the page with authorities; but I studied the original reports of the Arctic expeditions carefully in preparing the paper, and I believe it to be accurate throughout.

The voyage from New London to England, when she was thus returned, is strictly her last voyage.  But when this article was printed its name was correct.]

* * * * *

Copyrights
Project Gutenberg
The Man Without a Country and Other Tales from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.