Who Spoke Next | Page 6

mortification of my life--he actually used me to dig with. This was a contemptible feeling in me, and I have since learned to be ashamed of it, and to know that all labor is equally honorable, if it is for a good end. They had not tools enough for making entrenchments, and they actually used the bayonet, of which I had been proud, for this purpose. In the confusion after the battle, I was forgotten. I was left at the bottom of the works in the mud.
It was a hard thing for me to be parted from William, and to feel that I should never be restored to my corner in his mother's room behind the old clock; but I had a conviction that I had taken part in a great work, and I enjoyed our triumphs greatly.
This, you will think, no doubt, was glory enough for one musket; but a greater still was in reserve for me. It is with muskets as with men, one opportunity improved opens the way for another, and every chance missed is a loss past calculation; for every gain that might have grown out of that chance is lost too.
Every one should remember that, as he fights his way through the battle of life; and, when tempted to slacken his fire, think of what the old revolutionary spirit, speaking through my muzzle, taught on that day,--'hold on, and hold fast, and hold out. Never stop, stay, or delay, but make ready!--present!-- fire!--and, again and again, make ready!--present!--fire!--till every round of ammunition is gone.'"
Here the dry, rusty, unmodulated tone, in which the old king's arm had, up to this time, spoken, suddenly changed; and it seemed as if a succession of shots had been let off. Then, bringing himself down to the floor with a DUNT off of the little tea chest full of old shoes, on which he had stood leaning against the brick chimney, exactly as he used to do grounding arms seventy years ago, he quietly dropped back into the drowsy tone of narrative, and proceeded:--
"Yes--never flag nor hang back. The greater the danger, the more do you press up to the mark. So we did at Trenton in the Jerseys, on that most glorious day of my life of which I am now about to tell you.
I must tell you that I had the honor of fighting under General Washington; for I had been marched down to Trenton with a stout- hearted teamster, named Judah Loring, from Braintree, Massachusetts, who, after our battle at Bunker Hill, in that State, picked me up from the bottom of the works, where, for want of pickaxes, I had been, as I told you, serving as a trenching, tool, and made himself my better-half and commander-in-chief. Excuse a stately phrase; but, after the battle of Bunker Hill, I never could screw up my muzzle to call any man master or owner again.
We found only a few thousand men and muskets there, principally from Virginia, Pennsylvania, and the Jerseys, with a few companies of New Englanders; and a steadier, sturdier set of men than these last never breathed. They had enlisted for six months only, and their time was out; but they never spoke of quitting the field.
It was now December, in the midst of snow and ice; and not a foot among them that did not come bleeding to the frozen path it trod. But, night after night, the men relieved each other to mount guard, though the provision chest was well nigh empty; and, day after day, they scoured the country for the chance of supplies, appearing to the enemy on half a dozen points in the course of the day; making him think the provincials, as we were scornfully called, ten times as numerous as we really were. But alas, I am old, I find, and lose the thread of my story. It was of Washington I meant to speak.
Nobody could know General Washington that had not seen him as we did, at that dark hour of the struggle. It seemed as if that man never slept. All day he was planning, directing, contriving; and all night long he would write--write--write; letters to Congress, begging them to give him full powers, and all would go well, for he did not want power for himself, but only power to serve them; letters to the generals in the north, warning, comforting, and advising them; letters to his family and friends, bidding them look at him and do as he did; letters to influential men every where, entreating them to enlist men and money for the holy cause.
He never rested; and, with the cold gray dawning, would order out his horse and ride through and around the miserable tents, and where we often slept under the