Sarah J. Prichard

“ Blue-Eyed Boy was admitted within the hollow square formed by the brigades on the spot where stands the City Hall. Within the same square was General Washington, sitting on horseback, and the great Declaration was read by one of his aids.
It is needless to tell how it was received by the eager men who listened to the mighty truths with reverent, uncovered heads. Henceforth every man felt that he had a banner under which to fight, as broad as the sky above him, as sheltering as the homely roof of home. ”

“ In five minutes she reappeared in the kitchen, a picture pleasant to look at. In all New England, there could not be a more beautiful little old lady than Martha Moulton was that day. Her hair was guiltless now of cobwebs, but haloed her face with fluffy little curls of silvery whiteness, above which, like a crown, was a little cap of dotted muslin, pure as snow. Her erect figure, not a particle of the hard-working-day in it now, carried well the folds of a sheeny, black silk gown, over which she had tied an apron as spotless as the cap. ”

“ The army waited through all the long warm days. The summer went; the leaves fell; the chill winds and the cold sea-fogs wound into and out of the poor little tents and struck the brave men who, having no tents, tried to be strong and endure.
Every child knows, or ought to know, the story of that winter; how day by day, all over New England, men were striving to gather firearms and powder wherewith to take back from the foe poor Boston. But, alas, there was not powder enough in all the land to do it.
The long, wearying winter had done its worst for the prisoned inhabitants within the town ”

“ Addressing the turkeys, she said: “You’re all up there, I see, and if you only knew enough; if you weren’t the dear, old, wise, stupid things that you are, I’ll tell you what you would do. After I’m gone in the house, and the door is shut, and nobody here to see, you’d get right down, and you’d fly off in a hurry to the deepest part of the wood to spent your Thanksgiving, you would. The cold of the woods isn’t half as bad for you as the fire of the oven will be.”
Becca finished her speech; the turkeys rustled in their feathers and doubtless wondered what it all meant, while she stood thinking. ”

“ He burst into Aunt Hannah’s house with the news that he had been to Boston, that the soldiers were all gone, that he had seen his mother, that she had the small-pox and sent him off in a hurry.
“Tut! tut!” she cried. “It’s wicked to tell lies, Jeremy Jagger.”
“I’m not telling lies. Every word is true. Please give me something to eat.”
But Aunt Hannah did not wait to give the lad food, nor even to speak the prayer of thanksgiving that went like incense from her heart. She went into the barn-yard and threw corn on the barn-floor, to which the hens and turkeys made haste. ”

“ The tears that the fiercest mosquito had failed to extort from Anna came now. “I wish I’d let her go,” she cried, fondly stroking Sleet. “At least she wouldn’t have been killed, and we’d had her again sometime, maybe; but now—I say, Valentine, are you going to give up Snow?”
“No, I ain’t,” stoutly persisted the lad, slapping with his broad palm the panting side of the calf, where mosquitoes still clung.
“But, my poor children,” said Mother Kull, “you will have to. It can’t be helped. If we refuse them, don’t you know, they will burn our house down.” ”

“ The Turtle was drawn up under the grassy bank, where the long sedge half hid, and bushels of rock-weed and sea-drift wholly concealed it, and then, in a few carefully-chosen words, David Bushnell entrusted it to the watch and care of the boatmen.
“I am going to leave it here, and you with it, until I return,” he said. “Guard it with your lives if need be. If you handle it, it will be at the risk of life. If you keep it well, Congress will reward you.” ”

“ Something of the olden music, of the loud acclaim, may swing around with the shadow and fall on your ears, since no motion is ever spent, no sound ever still.
On that night, when the grand burst of enthusiasm had arisen, Blue-Eyed Boy said to General Washington: “I am afraid, sir, if Congress had known, they never would have done it, never! It seemed easy to do it in Philadelphia, where everything is just as it used to be; but here, with all the British ships riding in, full of soldiers, and guns enough in them to smash the old State House where they did it! ”

“ The brave man never boasts of his bravery nor the trustworthy man of his trustworthiness. How you learned what you know of the plans of General Washington I do not care to ask; but to-day and all days keep quiet and show yourself worthy of being trusted.”
“I’ll try as hard as I can,” promised Jeremy.
“No one can have tried his best without accomplishing something that it was grand to do, though not always just what he was trying to do,” responded the man, glancing kindly down upon the fresh, eager lad, tramping through the snow, at his side. “Don’t forget. ‘Silence is golden,’ in war always. ”

“ In the long kitchen, as the heated hours went by, the brick oven was fired again and again until the very stones of the chimney expanded with glowing heat, and the last swallow forsook its ancient nest in despair. The sun was in the west when Mr. Porter, with a bag of wheat on one side of the saddle and a bag of rye on the other, appeared at the kitchen entrance and summoned help to unload, but his accustomed helpers were gone. Even Cato, the reliable, was missing. Phyllis and Nancy received the wheat and the rye. ”

“ Consternation seizes British troops on Long Island. The brave soldiers on the parapet at Governor’s Island quake with fear. All New York rushes to the river-side to find out what it can mean. Nothing, on all the face of the earth, ever happened like it before, one and all declare. ”

“ When every neighbor feels it a duty to carry intelligence from the last speaker he has met to the next hearer he may meet, news flies fast, so Goodwife Elderkin was prepared for the accost of Mr. Devotion. She did not linger long in the swamp, but, washing her hands free from mud in the water of the pond, walked swiftly home. By the time she reached her house, the gray pony and his rider were two miles away on the road to Canterbury. The cry of hunger and possible starvation in the town of Boston was spreading from village to village and from house to house. ”

“ Before he had a chance to get an answer in, David Bushnell stepped forward, and, taking the little figure of his mother in his arms, kissed her sharply, and walked away, to give some imaginary attention to the Turtle at the bank.
“It is a fair land to work for!” spoke up Doctor Franklin, looking about upon river and earth and sea; “worthy it is of our highest efforts; of our lives, even, if need be. God give us strength as our need shall be.”
With many a tug and pull and hearty heave-ho, the Turtle was hoisted up the bank and safely drawn into the seine-house. ”

“ It is impossible to follow David Bushnell in his many journeys to the iron furnaces of Salisbury, in the spring and early summer of 1776, during which time the entire country was aroused and astir from the removal of the American army from Boston to New York; and our friends at Saybrook were busy as bees from morning till night, in getting ready perfect machines for duty. ”

“ Blue-Eyed Boy. You didn’t keep your eye very close to Congress Hall in the morning of last Thursday, or you would have heard Mr. Hancock or Mr. Thompson read to Congress a letter from General Washington, announcing the arrival of General Howe at Sandy Hook with one hundred and ten ships of war.
No, no! Blue-Eyed Boy and every other boy; the men who dared to say, and sign their names to the assertion, “A nation is born to-day,” did not do it under the rosy flush of glorious victory, but in the fast-coming shadow of mighty Britain, strong in all the power and radiant with all the pomp of war. ”

“ Already six thousand British soldiers had landed and taken possession of the island. Hills and forests were not high enough nor deep enough; and now the very marsh had cast them out by its army of winged stingers—more dreadful than human foe.
“I just wish,” ejaculated the poor sunburned, mosquito-tortured, hungry girl, who stood between marsh and meadow,—“I wish I had ’em every one tied hand and foot and dumped into the sedge where we’ve been. Mother, I wouldn’t use Sleet’s milk to-night, not a drop of it,—it’s crazy milk, I know: she’s been tortured so. Poor cow! poor creature! ”

“ On the land they feared not to contend with Englishmen. Love of liberty in the Provincials was strong enough, when united with a trusty musket and a fair supply of powder, to encounter red-coated regulars of the British army; but on the ocean, and in every bay, harbor and river, they were powerless. The enemy’s ships had kept Boston in siege for nearly two years, the Americans having no opposing force to contend with them.
Could this little Turtle, which David Bushnell carried under his arm, do the work he wished it to, why, every ship of the line could be blown into the air! ”

“ Every few minutes he is compelled to rise to the surface to look out from the top of the machine to guide his course, and his track grows very zig-zag through the waters.
Ah! the soldiers at Governor’s Island see the Turtle! Hundreds are gathering upon the parapet to watch its motions, such a curious boat as it is, with turret of brass bobbing up and down, sinking, disappearing—coming to the surface again in a manner wholly unaccountable. ”

“ Now Sleet and Snow were treasures untold to Valentine and Anna Kull. Anna’s pocket-money, stored up to be spent once-a-year in New York, came to her hands by the sale of butter to oystermen; and the calf, Snow, was the exclusive property of her brother Valentine. No wonder they were striving to save their possessions—ignorant, children as they were, of every good which they could not see and feel.
Cow and calf, or rather calf and cow, never before were given such a race. Highways were ignored. There were not many beaten tracks at that time on Staten Island. ”

“ Now the soldiers are gone, the camp is not, the little girl has passed away, the apple-tree is dead, and only the hills at Valley Forge are left to tell the story, bitter with suffering, eloquent with praise, of the men who had a hundred years ago toiled for Freedom there, and are gone home to God. ”

“ On all the hills were gathered men, women and children to see the British troops depart.
Jeremy Jagger was up before the dawn on that sweetest of Sunday mornings in March, and he reached the Roxbury lines just as General Ward was ready to put his arms about Boston’s Neck. The lad took his place with the five hundred men and walked by Ensign Richards’ side, as he proudly bore the standard up to the gates, which Ebenezer Learned “unbarred and opened.” ”

“ The men of that day are long dead. The same soil holds regulars and minute-men. England, which over-ruled, and the provinces, that put out brave hands to seize their rights, are good friends to-day, and have shaken hands over many a threshold of hearty thought and kind deed since that time. ”

“ And they do beware by turning and rowing with all speed for the island whence they came.
Poor Lee looks out with amazement to see them go. He is well-nigh exhausted, and the magazine, with its dreadful clock-work going on within it, and its hundred and fifty pounds of powder, ready to go off at a given moment, is floating on behind him, borne by the tide.
He strains every muscle to near New York. He signals the shore.
Since daylight Putnam has been there keeping watch. David Bushnell has paced up and down all night, in keen anxiety. ”

“ The sounds seemed to emerge from the earth, and timid men passed up the river with every inch of sail set to catch the breeze, lest the solemn thud should sound, that a hundred persons were willing to testify had been heard by each and every one of them, at some hour of the night, coming from the tomb. ”

“ The tree of Liberty grows yet, stately and fair, for the men of the Revolution planted it well, and surely, God himself hath given it increase. So we gather to-day, in this our story, a forget-me-not more, from the old town of Concord.
When the troops had marched away, the weary little woman laid aside her silken gown, resumed her homespun dress, and immediately began to think of getting Uncle John down-stairs again into his easy chair; but it required more aid than she could give, to lift the fallen man. ”

“ When Jeremy had ended his expressed wishes, he gathered up his hatchet, dinner-basket, and coil of stout cord, and plunged through the snow after his leader.
When he had overtaken him, the impulsive lad’s heart burst out at the lips with the words: “We could take Boston now, just as easy as anything—without wasting a jot of powder either. Skip across the ice, don’t you see, and be right in there before daylight. A big army lying still for months and months, and just doing nothing but wait for folks in Boston to starve out! ”