Then Abner Dean of Angel’s raised a point of order, when—
A chunk of old red sandstone took him in the abdomen,
And he smiled a kind of sickly smile and curled up on the floor,
And the subsequent proceedings interested him no more.
For, in less time than I write it, every member did engage
In a warfare with the remnants of a paleozoic age;
And the way they heaved those fossils in their anger was a sin,
Till the skull of an old mammoth caved the head of Thompson in.
And this is all I have to say of these improper games,
For I live at Table Mountain and my name is Truthful James;
And I’ve told in simple language what I know about the row
That broke up our society upon the Stanislow.
NATHAN HALE.
BY FRANCIS MILES FINCH.
These verses were written by the author of “The Blue and the Gray.” Nathan Hale, great-uncle of Edward Everett Hale, was born at Coventry, Conn., June 6, 1755. He was sent to New York by Washington to get information about the British, and was arrested while on that mission. He was hanged as a spy by order of Sir William Howe, Sept. 22, 1776. By his executioner he was denied the use of a Bible, and his family letters were burned.
To drum beat and heart beat,
A soldier marches by;
There is color in his cheek,
There is courage in his eye,
Yet to drum beat and heart beat
In a moment he must die.
By the starlight and moonlight,
He seeks the Briton’s camp;
He hears the rustling flag
And the armed sentry’s tramp;
And the starlight and the moonlight
His silent wanderings lamp.
With slow tread and still tread,
He scans the tented line;
And he counts the battery guns,
By the gaunt and shadowy pine;
And his slow tread and still tread
Gives no warning sign.
The dark wave, the plumed wave,
It meets his eager glance;
And it sparkles ’neath the stars,
Like the glimmer of a lance—
A dark wave, a plumed wave,
On an emerald expanse.
A sharp clang, a still clang,
And terror in the sound!
For the sentry, falcon eyed,
In the camp a spy hath found;
With a sharp clang, a steel clang,
The patriot is bound.