CHAPTER XX
MOLLY PITCHER
In the days of the American Revolution a young woman lived as a servant in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, with the family of General Irving, a retired British officer, who had fought in the French and Indian War and had seen a great deal of service. This young woman was named Molly Ludwig Hays, and was the wife of a barber who had been well known in the village. He had won her hand with difficulty for Molly was a belle throughout the countryside. She was not only handsome, but as strong as a man, able to carry a heavy meal-sack on her shoulder; and one of the hardest workers that the town knew. She washed and scrubbed and scoured and baked from morning till night, and seemed to revel in the hard work that gave the needed exercise to her strong muscles.
Throughout her life Molly Hays had admired soldiers, and more than once she expressed herself in no undecided terms to the effect that she wished she were a man so that she could bear arms and wear a uniform, and be a soldier herself.
When she was still a very young woman the American Revolution for freedom from Great Britain broke out. All the country was aflame, and rang with the stories of what happened at Lexington and Bunker Hill. Man after man from the village took his powder horn and musket and went off to enlist for the war, and Molly grew more and more restless as she saw them go.
At last her husband came to her, somewhat sheepishly, for he disliked to tell her the intention he had in his heart; but at length he made her understand that just because he was married was no reason why he should remain at home with the women; and he, too, intended to enlist that very day.
Molly consented with the utmost enthusiasm. She told him that she would be proud to be the wife of a soldier, since she could not be one herself, and bade him farewell with the admonishment to do his part bravely and to bear himself like the man she knew him to be. And she stood at the door of their home waving good-by to him with a cheerful face that gave no hint of her aching heart.
When her husband had departed Molly returned to the Irving household where she worked as well as she had before her marriage, trying to find relief in the heavy labor from the pain of having lost her husband and the aching desire to go and do her part beside him even though she were a woman. Fate, thought Molly, had made a sad mistake, in making her a woman, for she knew that in spite of her petticoats she could soldier as well as the men,—and if she had only been a man she believed she could have risen to an important position in the army.
The tide of the struggle wavered and battles with the red coats were fought and won. It was hard to get the newspapers in those times and news of the armies and their doings was often weeks behind the actual events. Molly hoped and waited, but for weeks at a time she went without word from her husband and did not know whether he were alive or dead.
One day a messenger called for her at the Irving household. He had a letter from John Hays for Molly, and it not only told her that he was alive and well, but was in camp not far off from her former home in Trenton, New Jersey, where her aged parents were still living. The letter ended by telling her to come to Trenton and live with her parents, for he would be able without doubt to get leave from his command and see her often.