HOW ONE BOY HELPED THE BRITISH TROOPS OUT OF BOSTON IN 1776.
It was Commander-in-chief Washington’s birthday, and it was Jeremy Jagger’s birthday.
General Washington was forty-four years old that birthday, a hundred years ago. Jeremy Jagger was fourteen, and early in the morning of the 22d of February, 1776, the General and the lad were looking upon the same bit of country, but from different positions. General George Washington was reviewing his precious little army for the thousandth time; the lad Jeremy was looking from a hill upon the camp at Cambridge, and from thence across the River Charles over into Boston, which city had, for many months, been held by the British soldiers.
At last Jeremy exclaimed: “I say, it’s too chestnut-bur bad; it is.”
“Did you step on one?” questioned a tall, hard-handed, earnest-faced man, who at the instant had come up to the stone-wall on which Jeremy stood, surveying the camp and its surroundings.
“No, I didn’t,” retorted the lad; “but I wish Boston was paved all over with chestnut-burs, and 48 that every pesky British officer in it had to walk barefoot from end to end fourteen times a day, I do; and the fourteenth time I’d order two or three Colony generals to take a turn with ’em. General Gates for one.”
“Come along, Jeremy,” called his companion, who had strode across the wall and gone on, regardless of the boy’s words.
When Jeremy had ended his expressed wishes, he gathered up his hatchet, dinner-basket, and coil of stout cord, and plunged through the snow after his leader.