Who Spoke Next

by Eliza Lee Cabot Follen

I felt ALIVE that day. Judah was hot, but I was hotter; and, before the cartridge box was empty, he pulled down his homespun blue and white frock sleeve over his wrist, and rested me upon it when he took aim. He was a gentle-hearted fellow, though as brave as his musket.

"She's so hot," says he, doubling his sleeve into his palm, "that I can't hold her; but I can't stop firing NOW!"

I met his wishes exactly, I knew by that word; for he always called every thing he liked, SHE. The sun was SHE; so was his father's old London-made watch; so was the Continental Congress.

General Washington saw the whole;—the enemy, driven back before our fire, could never be brought to look us in the face again. We held the ground;—the Virginia troops rallied;—General Washington took off his cocked hat, and lifted it high, like a finished gentleman, as he was. "Hurrah!" he shouted, "God bless the New England troops! God bless the Massachusetts line!" [Footnote: This was all fact, related by one who was present.] And his steady face flamed and gave way like melting metal.

Ah, what a set of men were those! I felt the firm trip-hammer of all their pulses beat through the whole fight, for we stood in platoon, shoulder to shoulder. I felt my kindred with every one of them. They had more steel in their nerves and more iron in their blood than other men. Not a man cared a straw for his life, so he saved from wrong and bondage the lives of them that should come after him.

That day's work raised hope in every man's heart through the land. Said I not well that it was the most glorious of my life?

I have but little more to say. I have said more than I meant to, more perhaps than was wise to say of my own glory. But the thought of those brave days of old makes one too talkative.

I must tell you, however, how I at last came here. Judah Loring brought me home safe; he was a very honest fellow, and seeing the initials scratched on my butt-end, and 'Lexington' underneath, he went there on purpose to find to whom I belonged.

My friend William claimed me, and I was again placed behind the old clock in the little parlor. His mother looked very calm, and almost happy, but not as she once did; she sighed heavily when William brought me home. William's wound in his arm healed after a while, but his arm was disabled. By great self-denial and exertion, his mother had got him into college, and he was to be a schoolmaster.

The sight of me was painful to this good woman, and she gave me to uncle John who kept me safely and, on the whole, honorably till his son placed me here.