CHAPTER IX
A MAN WITH A CANE—“OFF WITH YOUR HAT”
Dennis O’Hay, who had created for the cause the alarm-post in the cedars, learned all the ways and byways of the Connecticut colonies, and the ways leading to and out of Boston. He was, as we have said, a giant in form, and his usual salutation—“The top of the morning to everybody,” or “The top of the morning to everybody on this green earth”—won the hearts of people, and as much by the tone in which it was spoken as by the whole-hearted expression itself. He came to be known as the Irish giant of the hill country.
He traveled much in the secret service from Lebanon to Plainfield and Providence, which was a part of the turnpike road to Norwich. The children and dogs seemed to know him, and the very geese along the way to salute him with honks of wonder quite uncommon.
He greeted titled people and laborers in the same common way, and he one day said to the Governor:
“If I were to meet General Prescott himself, I would not take off my hat to him unless he met me civil.”
Who was General Prescott? Not the patriot hero of Bunker Hill. He was a British general that had been sent to Rhode Island, and had made himself a terror there. The women, children, dogs, and perhaps the farmhouse geese, ran from him when he appeared; even the Rhode Island Quakers moved aside when he was seen in a highway.
He carried a cane.
When he met a person in the highway he used to say:
“Off with your hat! Don’t you know who I am?”
If the person so accosted did not doff his hat, the pompous General gave the hat a vigorous whack with his stout cane, and the wearer’s head rung, and the latter did not soon again forget his manners.