"To be sure, Sir," replied David Cobb, for such I afterwards found to be his name. "How could a boy be two years at the Boston High School and not know something about it? But I knew Drake's Address to the Flag, and Pierpont's Pilgrim Fathers, and Percival's New England, when I was not more than ten years old."
"Percival's New England!" said Clarendon, quite contemptuously. "Pray, what could a poet say about such a puny subject as this Yankee land of yours?"
"Do you not know that poem?" asked David; and we could see, by the moonlight, that there was something very like indignation at such ignorance in his fine dark eyes.
"Hear it, then, and see if you do not call it poetry."
If you could only have seen him, Bennie, as he stood on the cliff, with his rough, sailor-like hat in hand, and the breeze lifting his dark hair from his broad forehead, while, looking with absolute fondness on the scene around him, he repeated,—
"Hail to the land whereon we tread,
Our fondest boast!
The sepulchre of mighty dead,
The truest hearts that ever bled,
Who sleep on glory's brightest bed,
A fearless host;
No slave is here;—our unchained feet
Walk freely, as the waves that beat
Our coast.
"Our fathers crossed the ocean's wave
To seek this shore;
They left behind the coward slave
To welter in his living grave;
With hearts unbent, and spirits brave,
They sternly bore
Such toils as meaner souls had quelled;
But souls like these such toils impelled
To soar.
"Hail to the morn when first they stood
On Bunker's height,
And, fearless, stemmed the invading flood,
And wrote our dearest rights in blood,
And mowed in ranks the hireling brood,
In desperate fight!
O, 'twas a proud, exulting day,
For e'en our fallen fortunes lay
In light!
"There is no other land like thee,
No dearer shore;
Thou art the shelter of the free;
The home, the port, of liberty
Thou hast been, and shall for ever be,
Till time is o'er.
Ere I forget to think upon
My land, shall mother curse the son
She bore.
"Thou art the firm, unshaken rock
On which we rest;
And, rising from thy hardy stock,
Thy sons the tyrant's power shall mock,
And slavery's galling chains unlock,
And free the oppressed;
All who the wreath of freedom twine
Beneath the shadow of their vine
Are blest.
"We love thy rude and rocky shore,
And here we stand.
Let foreign navies hasten o'er,
And on our heads their fury pour,
And peal their cannon's loudest roar,
And storm our land;
They still shall find our lives are given
To die for home,—and leant on heaven
Our hand."
Did you think that a real Yankee could be so proud of living out of Virginia? I am sure those we have seen appear to be half ashamed of their country,—and to be sure it is not as good as ours; but I could not help liking this boy's warm, honest love of his native soil. Even Clarendon admired it, and, when he had done repeating his favorite lines, handed him a silver dollar, saying,—"There! buy yourself a book of just such poetry, if you choose, and if you can find any in praise of the Old Dominion, read it for my sake."
I knew that brother meant to do a gracious thing; but still there was something about David's appearance which would have made me afraid to give him money, and I was not surprised at the indignant flush which rose to his cheek, or the scornful way in which he threw the poor dollar over the rock into the sea.
"I am Captain Cobb's son, Sir," he said very proudly, "and must tell you, that, though a New England boy is not ashamed of earning money in any honest way, he never takes it as a gift from strangers. I should have pocketed your silver with great pleasure if I had sold you its worth in fish, or taken you out in the skiff for a day's excursion; but my mother would scorn me if I had taken alms like a beggar-boy."
I never saw Clarendon more confused than he was at this speech; yet he has so much pride himself, that he could not help liking the boy's honest love of independence. His curiosity was so much excited, that he prolonged the conversation, and discovered that David was the son of the captain of the Go-Ahead, the very schooner in which we are to sail to-morrow for Newfoundland. It will he the fourth of July, and the sailors were at first averse to going out upon that day, but concluded to celebrate it on shore in the morning, and depart in the afternoon. David is going to accompany his father on the trip, having studied a little too hard at school, and it being the custom here to intersperse study with seasons of labor.