WHO WAS THE MINUTEMAN? GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS TWO hundred years ago, Mary Shepherd, a girl of fifteen, was watching the savages on the hills of Concord, while her brothers thrashed in the barn. Suddenly the Indians appeared, slew her brothers, and carried her away. In the night, while the savages slept, she untied a stolen horse, slipped a saddle from under the head of one of her captors, mounted, fled, swam the Nashua River, and rode through the forest home. Mary Shepherd was the true ancestor of the minuteman of the Revolution. The minuteman of the Revolution! who was he? He was the husband, the father, who left the plow in the furrow, the hammer on the bench, and, kissing wife and children, marched to die or to be free. The minuteman of the Revolution! He was the old, the middleaged, the young. He was Captain Miles of Acton, who reproved his men for jesting on the march. He was Deacon Josiah Haines, of Sudbury, eighty years old, who marched with his company to South Bridge, at Concord, then joined in that hot pursuit to Lexington, and fell as gloriously as Warren at Bunker Hill. He was James Hayward, of Acton, twenty-two years old, foremost in that deadly race from Charlestown to Concord, who raised his piece at the same moment with a British soldier, each exclaiming, “You are a dead man." The Briton dropped, shot through the heart. Young Hayward fell, mortally wounded. "Father," said he, left. I never did "I started with forty balls, I have three such a day's work before. Tell mother not to mourn too much, and tell her whom I love more than my mother, that I am not sorry I turned out." This was the minuteman of the Revolution! The rural citizen trained in the common school, the town meeting, who carried a bayonet that thought, and whose gun, loaded with a principle, brought down, not a man, but a system. With brain and heart and conscience all alive, he opposed every hostile order of the British council. The cold Grenville, the brilliant Townshend, the reckless Hillsborough, derided, declaimed, denounced, laid unjust taxes, and sent troops to collect them, and the plain Boston Puritan laid his fingers on the vital point of the tremendous controversy, and held to it inexorably. Intrenched in his own honesty, the king's gold could not buy him. Enthroned in the love of his fellow-citizens, the king's writ could not take him. And when, on the morning at Lexington, the king's troops marched to seize him, his sublime faith saw, beyond the clouds of the moment, the rising sun of America, and, careless of himself, mindful only of his country, he exultingly exclaimed, "Oh, what a glorious morning!" He felt that a blow would soon be struck that would break the heart of British tyranny. His judgment, his conscience, told him the hcur had come. Unconsciously, his heart beat time to the music of the Slave's Epitaph: "God wills us free, Man wills us slaves; ALFRED TENNYSON 1809-1892 ALFRED TENNYSON, one of the most popular of modern poets, per haps the most popular and most widely read, was born at Somersby: Lincolnshire, in 1809. He was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge. He has written a great amount. Among his longer poems are "Maud," "Idylls of the King," The Princess," "In Memoriam,” “The Holy Grail,” “Queen Mary," "Harold," "Enoch Arden," and "English Idylls." 66 99 66 Among his shorter poems that are most frequently met are "Locksley Hall," "Dora," "The May Queen," "The Brook," "Charge of the Light Brigade," "Lady of Shalott," Lotus Eaters,” and “A Dream of Fair Women." These, however, are but a few. Lovers of Tennyson, and they are many, would name many others that should have been included in the list, and were it many times longer there would still be claims for poems omitted. Perhaps there is no poet of modern times about whom there is so much difference of opinion, either in regard to single poems or as to his work as a whole. CHARGE OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE ALFRED TENNYSON NOTE TO THE PUPIL. - Opinions as to the worth of Tennyson's poetry differ greatly; but it is certain that no one wishing to be considered even fairly well read can afford to miss reading many of his poems. Several of the shorter ones are given in this volume. Of his longer poems you would do well to try first either "English Idylls" or "Poems Chiefly Lyrical.” "Forward the Light Brigade!" Theirs but to do and die: Into the valley of death Cannon to right of them, Cannon in front of them Volleyed and thundered: Stormed at with shot and shell, Into the jaws of death, Into the mouth of hell Rode the six hundred. Flashed all their sabers bare, All the world wondered: Plunged in the battery smoke Right through the line they broke; Cossack and Russian Reeled from the saber stroke Shattered and sundered. Then they rode back, but not. Not the six hundred. Cannon to right of them, Cannon behind them Volleyed and thundered; They that had fought so well When can their glory fade? Honor the charge they made! R THE NEW YEAR ALFRED TENNYSON ING out, wild bells, to the wild sky, The year is dying in the night; Ring out the old, ring in the new; |