CHAP. VII.[ToC]
MIKE'S CROTCHETS IN WAR-TIME.
You have heard a great deal about the Revolutionary War. You have heard what hardships our forefathers went through, while they were fighting the battles of liberty. But I doubt if you can form, in your own mind, any thing like a true picture of what those brave men suffered. Why, many of them had to go barefoot, for whole weeks at a time, right in the heart of winter. They could hardly get food to eat; and many and many a time, if it had not been for the thought that they were engaged in a good cause, and that God was on their side, they must have been discouraged, and given up all as lost. But they did not give up. They stood firm at their post, until they either fell before their enemies, or perished by fatigue and exposure.
When the tidings came to the neighborhood where Mike Marble lived, that Washington's noble band were suffering every thing but death at Valley Forge, every man and woman, that could boast of any thing in the shape of a heart, were moved with pity. And they were not the people to let their kind feelings go off in fog and smoke. They were not blustering people. They believed in acting, as well as in talking. When they had heard the sad news, the next question was, "Can we do any thing?" That question was soon answered. The next was, "What can we do?" Well, it was pretty soon found out that all could do something—that some could do one thing, and some another; but that every family in the parish could do something.
So they went to work. The mothers and daughters went to knitting stockings, and making under garments for the soldiers. Every chest of drawers, and wardrobe, and closet in the house was ransacked, to find bed-quilts and blankets for the army. And the fathers and sons, they went to work, with a right good will, to get shoes, and hats, and coats, and other articles of wearing apparel, so as to have them ready at the time the agent from the commander-in-chief should pass through the place.
The younger branches of the families in that neighborhood, too, caught the spirit of their fathers and mothers. I must tell you a story about the agency of the little folks in furnishing supplies for the army.
Mike Marble asked his father, one day, if he might call a meeting of the boys and girls at his house, to talk over war matters. The old man laughed, and said he might, if he chose. "But what do you children expect to do for the army, Mike?" he added. "What can you do, I should like to know?"