Who Spoke Next

by Eliza Lee Cabot Follen

"God bless you, William," she said, "and bring you back safe to us; but do your duty and fear nothing."

She kissed him, and he left her. I felt William's heart beat bravely as he shouldered me. He was a fine fellow. We were as one. I was proud of him, and he of me. No man and musket did better than William and I, on that never-to-be-forgotten day; but, in the midst of the battle, a shot wounded William's right arm, and he let me fall.

His uncle led him off the field and sent him home to his mother. A countryman, who had nothing but an oak stick to fight with, seized me as I lay on the ground, and here I met with the first mortification of my life—he actually used me to dig with. This was a contemptible feeling in me, and I have since learned to be ashamed of it, and to know that all labor is equally honorable, if it is for a good end. They had not tools enough for making entrenchments, and they actually used the bayonet, of which I had been proud, for this purpose. In the confusion after the battle, I was forgotten. I was left at the bottom of the works in the mud.

It was a hard thing for me to be parted from William, and to feel that I should never be restored to my corner in his mother's room behind the old clock; but I had a conviction that I had taken part in a great work, and I enjoyed our triumphs greatly.

This, you will think, no doubt, was glory enough for one musket; but a greater still was in reserve for me. It is with muskets as with men, one opportunity improved opens the way for another, and every chance missed is a loss past calculation; for every gain that might have grown out of that chance is lost too.

Every one should remember that, as he fights his way through the battle of life; and, when tempted to slacken his fire, think of what the old revolutionary spirit, speaking through my muzzle, taught on that day,—'hold on, and hold fast, and hold out. Never stop, stay, or delay, but make ready!—present!—fire!—and, again and again, make ready!—present!—fire!—till every round of ammunition is gone.'"

Here the dry, rusty, unmodulated tone, in which the old king's arm had, up to this time, spoken, suddenly changed; and it seemed as if a succession of shots had been let off. Then, bringing himself down to the floor with a DUNT off of the little tea chest full of old shoes, on which he had stood leaning against the brick chimney, exactly as he used to do grounding arms seventy years ago, he quietly dropped back into the drowsy tone of narrative, and proceeded:—

"Yes—never flag nor hang back. The greater the danger, the more do you press up to the mark. So we did at Trenton in the Jerseys, on that most glorious day of my life of which I am now about to tell you.

I must tell you that I had the honor of fighting under General Washington; for I had been marched down to Trenton with a stout-hearted teamster, named Judah Loring, from Braintree, Massachusetts, who, after our battle at Bunker Hill, in that State, picked me up from the bottom of the works, where, for want of pickaxes, I had been, as I told you, serving as a trenching, tool, and made himself my better-half and commander-in-chief. Excuse a stately phrase; but, after the battle of Bunker Hill, I never could screw up my muzzle to call any man master or owner again.

We found only a few thousand men and muskets there, principally from Virginia, Pennsylvania, and the Jerseys, with a few companies of New Englanders; and a steadier, sturdier set of men than these last never breathed. They had enlisted for six months only, and their time was out; but they never spoke of quitting the field.