1st Sol. What's to hinder them?
2nd Sol. We,—yes we,—and such as we, craven-hearted as we are. They'll never get to Albany until we take them there captives.
3d Sol. Then they'll wait till next week, I reckon.
1st Sol. Ha ha ha! Ha ha ha! How many prisoners shall we have a-piece, John? How many regiments, I mean? They'll open the windows when we get there, won't they? I hope the sun will shine that day. How grandly we shall march down the old hill there, with our train behind us. I shall have to borrow a coat of one of them though, they might be ashamed of their captor else.
3d Sol. When is this great battle to be, John? This don't look much like it.
4th Sol. I think myself, if the General would only give us a chance to fight—
2nd Sol. A chance to throw your life away,—he will never give you. A chance to fight, you will have ere long,—doubt it not. Our General might clear his blackened fame, by opposing this force to that,—this day he might;—he will not do it. The time has not yet come. But he will spare no pains to strengthen the army, and prepare it for victory, and the glory he will leave to his rival. Recruits will be pouring in ere long. General Burgoyne's proclamation has weakened us,—General Schuyler will issue one himself to-day.
1st Sol. Will he? will he? What will he proclaim?—As to the recruits he gets, I'll eat them all, skin and bone. What will he proclaim? You see what Burgoyne offers us. On the one hand, money and clothing, and protection for ourselves and our families; and on the other, the cord, and the tomahawk, and the scalping-knife. Now, what will General Schuyler set down over against these two columns?—What will he offer us?—To lend us a gun, maybe,—leave to follow him from one post to another, barefooted and starving, and for our pains to be cursed and reviled for cowards from one end of the land to the other. And what will he threaten? Ha, we were cowards indeed, if we feared what he could threaten. What thing in human nature will he speak to?—say.
2nd Sol. I will tell you. To that spirit in human nature which resists the wrong, the fiendish wrong threatened there. Ay, in the basest nature that power sleeps, and out of the bosom of Omnipotence there is nothing stronger. It has wakened here once, and this war is its fruit. It slumbers now. Let Burgoyne look to it that he rouse it not himself for us. Let him look to it. For every outrage of those fiendish legions, thank God.—It lays a finger on the spring of our only strength. What will he offer us? I will tell you.—A chance to live, or to die,—men,—ay, to leave a sample of manhood on the earth, that shall wring tears from the selfish of unborn ages, as they feel for once the depths of the slumbering and godlike nature within them. And Burgoyne,—oh! a coat and a pair of shoes, he offers, and—how many pounds?—Are you men?
4th Sol. What do you say, Sam?—Talks like a minister, don't he?