The Old Bell of Independence | Page 7

of solemn silence, on the eve of the uproar and bloodshed and strife of to-morrow.'
"The propriety of this language was manifest. Breathless attention was pictured upon every countenance, and the smallest whisper could be distinctly heard. Pausing a moment, as if running back, in his mind's eye, over the eventful past, he again repeated his text:--
"'They that take the sword shall perish by the sword.'
'And have they not taken the sword?
'Let the desolated plain, the blood-soddened valley, the burnt farm-house, blackening in the sun, the sacked village, and the ravaged town, answer; let the whitening bones of the butchered farmer, strewn along the fields of his homestead, answer; let the starving mother, with the babe clinging to the withered breast, that can afford no sustenance, let her answer; with the death-rattle mingling with the murmuring tones that mark the last struggle for life--let the dying mother and her babe answer!
'It was but a day past and our land slept in peace. War was not here--wrong was not here. Fraud, and woe, and misery, and want, dwelt not among us. From the eternal solitude of the green woods arose the blue smoke of the settler's cabin, and golden fields of corn looked forth from amid the waste of the wilderness, and the glad music of human voices awoke the silence of the forest.
'Now! God of mercy, behold the change! Under the shadow of a pretext--under the sanctity of the name of God--invoking the Redeemer to their aid, do these foreign hirelings slay our people! They throng our towns; they darken our plains; and now they encompass our posts on the lonely plain of Chadd's Ford.
"The effect was electric. The keen eye of the in-trepid Wayne flashed fire. The neighboring sentinels, who had paused to listen, quickened their pace, with a proud tread and a nervous feeling, impatient for vengeance on the vandal foe.
"Gathering strength once more, he checked the choking sensations his own recital had caused, and continued:
"'They that take the sword shall perish by the sword.'
"Brethren, think me not unworthy of belief, when I tell you that the doom of the Britisher is near! Think me not vain, when I tell you that beyond the cloud that now enshrouds us, I see gathering, thick and fast, the darker cloud and the blacker storm of a Divine retribution!
'They may conquer us on the morrow! Might and wrong may prevail, and we may be driven from this field--but the hour of God's own vengeance will surely come!
'Ay, if in the vast solitudes of eternal space, if in the heart of the boundless universe, there throbs the being of an awful God, quick to avenge, and sure to punish guilt, then will the man, George of Brunswick, called king, feel in his brain and in his heart the vengeance of the Eternal Jehovah! A blight will be upon his life--a withered brain, an accurst intellect; a blight will be upon his children, and on his people. Great God! how dread the punishment!
'A crowded populace, peopling the dense towns where the man of money thrives, while the labourer starves; want striding among the people in all its forms of terror; an ignorant and God-defying priesthood chuckling over the miseries of millions; a proud and merciless nobility adding wrong to wrong, and heaping insult upon robbery and fraud; royalty corrupt to the very heart; aristocracy rotten to the core; crime and want linked hand in hand, and tempting men to deeds of woe and death--these are a part of the doom and the retribution that shall come upon the English throne and the English people!'
"This was pronounced with a voice of such power, that its tones might have reached almost to the Briton's camp, and struck upon the ear of Howe as the prophetic inspiration of one whose keen eye had read from the dark tablets of futurity.
"Looking around upon the officers, he perceived that Washington and Lafayette had half risen from their seats, and were gazing spell-bound at him, as if to drink in every word he uttered.
"Taking advantage of the pervading feeling, he went on:--
"'Soldiers--I look around upon your familiar faces with a strange interest! To-morrow morning we will all go forth to battle--for need I tell you that your unworthy minister will march with you, invoking God's aid in the fight?--we will march forth to battle! Need I exhort you to fight the good fight, to fight for your homesteads, and for your wives and children?
'My friends, I might urge you to fight, by the galling memories of British wrong! Walton--I might tell you of your father butchered in the silence of midnight on the plains of Trenton; I might picture his grey hairs dabbled in blood; I might ring his death-shriek in your ears. Shelmire--I might tell you of a mother