The gentlemen I met were all most kind and polite; some appeared to be gentlemen bred, others honest young men—over-silent and sober for their years, perhaps, but truly a sturdy, clean-limbed company, neatly but not fashionably attired, and the majority characterized by a certain lankness of body which tended to gauntness in a few.
All were officers of alarm companies belonging to the numerous towns of the province; all were simple in manner, courteous to each other, and thoughtful of strangers, inviting us to wine or punch, and taking no offence when I prudently refused, for my own sake as well as for Jack's.
Two soldiers of the Lexington militia entertained me most agreeably; they were Nathan Harrington and Robert Monroe, the latter an old soldier, having been standard-bearer for his regiment at Louisburg.
"For years," he observed, quietly, "the British have said that all Americans are cowards, and they have so dinned it into their own ears that they believe it. It is a strange thing for them to believe. Who was it stood fast before Duquesne when Braddock's British fled? Who took Louisburg? What men have fought for England on our frontiers from our grandfathers' times?"
"Ay," broke in Harrington, "they tell us that we are yokels without wit or knowledge to fire a musket. Yet, to-day, two-thirds of the men in our province of Massachusetts Bay have served as soldiers against the French or the savages."
"That we are under the King's displeasure," said Monroe, "I can well understand; but that he and his ministers and his soldiers should wish to deem us cowards—we who are English, too, as well as they—passes my understanding."
"Mayhap they will learn the truth ere winter," observed Harrington, grimly.
"If I or my friends be cowards, I do not know it," added Monroe, simply. "It is not well to boast, Nathan, for God alone knows what a man may do in battle; yet I myself have been in battle, and was afraid, too, but never ran. I carried England's flag once. It is not well that she foul her own nest."
"I have never smelled powder; have you, sir?" said Harrington, turning to me.
"Not to boast of," I replied.