Part 3 (1/2)

School-keeping is a business of which I was always fond, but since my residence in this town, everything has conspired to render it more agreeable. I have thought much of never quitting it but with life, but at present there seems an opportunity for more extended public service.

The kindness expressed to me by the people of the place, but especially the proprietors of the school, will always be very gratefully remembered by, gentlemen, with respect, your humble servant,

NATHAN HALE

CHAPTER IV

A CALL TO ARMS

The place ”allotted” to him was that of lieutenant in the third company of the 7th Connecticut regiment, commanded by Colonel Charles Webb. No doubt exists that Lieutenant Nathan Hale was the same Nathan Hale who had won distinction in all his college work, in his subsequent teaching, and in all the events thus far a.s.sociated with his early manhood, with this difference; he was now lifted to a line of service that in his opinion seemed the highest possible for him to follow, and no one who studies his subsequent course can question that in this following he found the loftiest consecration thus far possible to him. Perhaps unconsciously he was to verify the poet's a.s.sertion,

”So nigh is grandeur to our dust, So near is G.o.d to man, When Duty whispers low, _Thou must_, The youth replies, _I can._”

With no trace of merely personal ambition, but with that splendid power of absorption in duty as in work, Nathan Hale followed in the steps of those devoted American patriots whose blood, so freely shed at Lexington, was calling upon their countrymen to shed theirs as freely, should duty demand it.

Dead almost one hundred and forty years, we still are thrilled by proofs of the splendid manhood henceforth to be so prominent in every remaining day of Hale's brief life. A few letters to friends, a fairly comprehensive diary for a few months, his camp-book, and the recollections of a few of the officers and of his body-servant, give a moderately complete picture of Nathan Hale for a few brief weeks, during which time he had been doing all in his power to perfect himself and the men under him in the duties of soldiers.

By the middle of September the Connecticut troops, having received orders from General Was.h.i.+ngton to proceed to the camp near Boston, the 7th Regiment, containing Lieutenant Hale's company, went to the spot appointed, remaining there during the winter, and leaving for New York, again by Was.h.i.+ngton's orders, in the spring. Of these intervening months, so momentous to the little army whose many members were impatient for the close of the war, Nathan Hale himself gives us vivid pictures; of the work he was trying to do; of the men he was meeting; of the religious life he was in no sense forgetting, and of his own deepening patriotism. Letters written to him show the att.i.tude of friends at home, and their interest both in the affairs of the country and in him personally. The following letter from Gilbert Saltonstall, a young Harvard graduate and warm friend of Hale while in New London, shows how fully the men at home, as well as those in the army, entered into the anxieties of the times:

NEW LONDON, Octo. 9th, 1775.

DEAR SIR:

By yours of the 5th I see you're Stationd in the Mouth of Danger--I look upon yr. Situation more Perilous than any other in the Camp--Should have thought the new Recreuits would have been Posted at some of the Outworks, & those that have been inured to Service advanc'd to Defend the most exposed Places--But all Things are concerted, and ordered with Wisdom no doubt--The affair of Dr.

Church[1] is truly amazing--from the acquaintance I have of his publick Character I should as soon have suspected Mr. Hanc.o.c.k or Adams as him.

[Footnote 1: Of this Dr. Church, John Fiske writes: ”In October, 1775, the American camp was thrown into great consternation by the discovery that Dr. Benjamin Church, one of the most conspicuous of the Boston leaders, had engaged in a secret correspondence with the enemy. Dr.

Church was thrown into jail, but as the evidence of treasonable intent was not absolutely complete, he was set free in the following spring, and allowed to visit the West Indies for his health. The s.h.i.+p in which he sailed was never heard from again.”]

(Then follow accounts of an affair on Long Island Sound, and extracts from a paper two days old just brought from New York, describing army matters in the North.)

I have extracted all the material News--should have sent the Paper but its the only one in Town and every one is Gaping for news.

Your sincere Friend GILBERT SALTONSTALL.

Another, also from Saltonstall, reads in part as follows:

ESTEEMED FRIEND

Doctor Church is in close Custody in Norwich Gaol, the windows boarded up, and he deny'd the use of Pen, Ink, and Paper, to have no converse with any Person but in presence of the Gaoler, and then to Converse in no Language but English. ... what a fall ...

Yr &c GILBERT SALTONSTALL.

Novr. 27th 1775

A letter already referred to as showing Hale's interest in New London and its people, also his feeling as to camp life, is here given.

”Betsey” was one of his pupils in his early-morning cla.s.ses. We note the little touch of good-natured fun in the last paragraph.