"I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me Liberty or give me Death!"
The patriotism of the cavaliers of Virginia was fermenting to overflowing, while that of the Puritans of Massachusetts was boiling with intense heat as the stamp-stampers and tea-tossers of Boston prepared for a deadly reception to the robbers and murders of King George on the plains of Lexington and Concord on the 19th of April, 1775.
Never can I forget the midnight ride I took with
PAUL REVERE,
on beholding the two lanterns displayed on the belfry of the "Old North Church"; I told the tale to Mr. Longfellow, and he forthwith immortalized the heroic Paul:
"A hurry of hoofs in a village street,
A shape in the moonlight, a bulk in the dark,
And beneath from the pebbles, in passing, a spark
Struck out by a steed flying fearless and fleet;
That was all! And yet, through the gloom and the light
The fate of a nation was riding that night,
And the spark struck out by that steed in his flight
Kindled the land into flame with its heat.
"You know the rest, in the books you have read,
How the British regulars fired and fled—
How the farmers gave them ball for ball,
From behind each fence and farm yard wall,
Chasing the 'Red Coats' down the lane,
Then crossing the fields to emerge again,
Under the trees at the turn of the road,
And only pausing to fire and load.
"So through the night rode Paul Revere;
And so through the night went his cry of alarm
To every Middlesex village and farm;
A cry of defiance, and not of fear,
A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door
And a word that shall echo forevermore!
For born on the night wind of the past,
Through all our history to the last,
In the hour of darkness and peril and need,
The people will waken and listen to hear
The hurrying hoof beats of that steed,
And the midnight message of Paul Revere."
How my soul thrills with recollection when I think where I stood in Carpenters Hall, Philadelphia, on the 4th of July, 1776, among the signers of the Declaration of Independence, and heard that grandest of human productions proclaimed to the world.