"The foregoing Statements were made from Memory & recollection & from documents & Memorandoms which I kept.—Elisha Bostwick."
(8) Edward Everett Hale
Of the subsequent records of the Hale family no trace remains that is not honorable. Nathan's brother Enoch was settled at Westhampton, Massachusetts, in 1777, where he remained a useful and beloved pastor for sixty years. Enoch's eldest son, Nathan, graduated at Williams College in 1804. He was editor-in-chief of the Boston Daily Advertiser for more than forty years. Nathan's son, Nathan, a Havard graduate, became associate editor of the Boston Advertiser.
Lucretia Peabody Hale, a well-known writer in her day, whose delightful and amusing "Peterkin Papers" are still read and remembered, was a granddaughter of the Rev. Enoch Hale.
Edward Everett Hale, a man beloved by every one who knew him, was the son of "a great journalist," Nathan, grandson of Enoch, and therefore grandnephew of Captain Nathan Hale. He, too, had a son Nathan who died in his early manhood. Edward Everett Hale was one of the most commanding and admired of men, with rare endowments as clergyman, author, editor, and patriot.
Those interested in the study of his granduncle, Nathan, owe to him the preservation of many records of the Hale family, and an arrangement of the genealogy of the Hale family, made while he was a Unitarian minister in Worcester, Massachusetts, and kindly lent to the Hon. I. W. Stuart, one of Hale's early biographers.
It will be long before some of Edward Everett Hale's vital words are forgotten; longer still before his marvelous story, "The Man Without a Country," shall cease to thrill its readers.
The impassioned sentences in which he cites its unhappy hero as speaking to a boy—a midshipman—while under heavy stress, read, "For your country, boy, and for your flag, never dream a dream but of serving her as she bids you, though the service carry you through a thousand hells. No matter what happens to you, no matter who flatters you or who abuses you, never look at another flag, never let a night pass but you pray God to bless that flag. Remember, boy, that behind all these men you have to do with, behind officers, and government, and people even, there is the Country Herself, your Country, and that you belong to Her as you belong to your own mother."
No one justly comprehending the bed rock of Edward Everett Hale's boundless patriotism can doubt that if the same call of duty had come to him that came in bygone days to his relative, young Nathan Hale, he would have done exactly as Nathan Hale did. That call did not come, but to the end of his days Edward Everett Hale lived for his country as nobly as Nathan Hale died for it.