Who Spoke Next | Page 6

me
into her son's hands.

"God bless you, William," she said, "and bring you back safe to us; but
do your duty and fear nothing."
She kissed him, and he left her. I felt William's heart beat bravely as he
shouldered me. He was a fine fellow. We were as one. I was proud of
him, and he of me. No man and musket did better than William and I,
on that never-to-be-forgotten day; but, in the midst of the battle, a shot
wounded William's right arm, and he let me fall.
His uncle led him off the field and sent him home to his mother. A
countryman, who had nothing but an oak stick to fight with, seized me
as I lay on the ground, and here I met with the first 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