"ElizaLeeFollen-WhoSpokeNext" - читать интересную книгу автора (Follen Eliza Lee)

hearted teamster, named Judah Loring, from Braintree, Massachusetts,
who, after our battle at Bunker Hill, in that State, picked me up
from the bottom of the works, where, for want of pickaxes, I had
been, as I told you, serving as a trenching, tool, and made himself
my better-half and commander-in-chief. Excuse a stately phrase; but,
after the battle of Bunker Hill, I never could screw up my muzzle to
call any man master or owner again.

We found only a few thousand men and muskets there, principally from
Virginia, Pennsylvania, and the Jerseys, with a few companies of New
Englanders; and a steadier, sturdier set of men than these last
never breathed. They had enlisted for six months only, and their
time was out; but they never spoke of quitting the field.

It was now December, in the midst of snow and ice; and not a foot
among them that did not come bleeding to the frozen path it trod.
But, night after night, the men relieved each other to mount guard,
though the provision chest was well nigh empty; and, day after day,
they scoured the country for the chance of supplies, appearing to
the enemy on half a dozen points in the course of the day; making
him think the provincials, as we were scornfully called, ten times
as numerous as we really were. But alas, I am old, I find, and lose
the thread of my story. It was of Washington I meant to speak.

Nobody could know General Washington that had not seen him as we
did, at that dark hour of the struggle. It seemed as if that man
never slept. All day he was planning, directing, contriving; and all
night long he would write--write--write; letters to Congress,
begging them to give him full powers, and all would go well, for he
did not want power for himself, but only power to serve them;
letters to the generals in the north, warning, comforting, and
advising them; letters to his family and friends, bidding them look
at him and do as he did; letters to influential men every where,
entreating them to enlist men and money for the holy cause.

He never rested; and, with the cold gray dawning, would order out
his horse and ride through and around the miserable tents, and where
we often slept under the bare heavens, and every heart was of bolder
and better cheer as he passed.

His look never changed. It was just the same steady face, whatever
went on before it; whether he saw us provincials beaten back, or
watched a thousand British regulars pile their arms after the
victory at Trenton.

He looked as he does in the great picture in Faneuil Hall, on the
right, as you stand before the rostrum. He stands there, by his
horse, just as I saw him before the passage of the Delaware, with
the steady, serious, immovable look that puts difficulties out of
countenance. It is the look of a man of sense and judgment, who has