that was indeed a morning when the ragged, blue-nosed, bare-footed, sniffling, blear-eyed, unpaid regulars and militia heard in the air like another reveille this cry for the first time: "These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. . . . .. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed. if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated." These phrases, these arguments, and appeals are so pat to their occasion that they revive the scene of their birth. One can feel the thrill of pride they gave those shabby forefathers who were such glorious fools, and gave their descendants such cause for pride and gratitude. Paine's line of argument would hit the farmer and the villager as common sense. His music would beautify their day. His eloquence would make them stand up straight and feel that they were fighting for something worth famine, nakedness and shame, and death. Paine knew that those men understood religious talk, and he was a very religious, God-loving man, though antipathetic to the Christian dogma. For the sake of his message he even called himself a Christian. But he was sincere when he wrote: "I have as little superstition in me as any man living, but my secret opinion has ever been, and still is, that God Almighty will not give up a people to military destruction, or leave them unsupportedly to perish, who have so earnestly and so repeatedly sought to avoid the calamities of war, by every decent method which wisdom could invent." He admitted there was a panic, but great folk had known panics times enough: "Britain has trembled like an ague at the report of a French fleet of flat-bottomed boats; and in the fourteenth century the whole English army, after ravaging the kingdom of France, was driven back like men petrified with fear; and this brave exploit was performed by a few broken forces collected and headed by a woman, Joan of Arc. Would that heaven might inspire some Jersey maid to spirit up her countrymen, and save her fair fellow sufferers from ravage and ravishment!" With poignant directness he brought duty home and made it a privilege. Nobody was too stupid or too wise to feel the greatness of the thought back of his anecdote of the Tory tavern-keeper, the man he had met who clung to his child's hand and used "this unfatherly expression: ""Well! give me peace in my day.' "Not a man lives on the continent but fully believes that a separation must some time or other finally take place, and a generous parent should have said, "If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace.' This is as noble an epitaph for the founders of a nation as ever was written. Paine could be sentimental, and he could shock: "Let them call me rebel and welcome, I feel no concern from it; but I should suffer the misery of devils, were I to make a whore of my soul by swearing allegiance to one whose character is that of a sottish, stupid, stubborn, worthless, brutish man. I conceive likewise a horrid idea in receiving mercy from a being, who at the last day shall be shrieking to the rocks and mountains to cover him, and fleeing with terror from the orphan, the widow, and the slain of America. . . "By perseverance and fortitude we have the prospect of a glorious issue; by cowardice and submission, the sad choice of a variety of evils-a ravaged country-a depopulated city-habitations without safety, and slavery without hope-our homes turned into barracks and bawdy-houses for Hessians, and a future race to provide for, whose fathers we shall doubt of. "Look on this picture and weep over it! and if there yet remains one thoughtless wretch who believes it not, let him suffer it unlamented." This was the sort of thing that Washington could love well enough to feed his soldiers for breakfast. The Reverend Ezra Stiles" says that these "publications & exertions excited the public Spirit" and increased Washington's army. They increased his soul as well and he meditated a great thing. "M XXXVII DICTATOR Y neck does not feel as though it was made for a halter," said Washington, passing his big hand over his long throat. He had been asking Reed if Pennsylvania would support the rebels in case they were driven from the Delaware river and on past Philadelphia into the western mountains. Reed answered dismally that if the eastern counties were subdued, the back counties would surrender. Washington sighed: "We must retire to Augusta County in Virginia. Numbers will be obliged to repair to us for safety; and we must try what we can do in carrying on a predatory war; and if overpowered we must cross the Alleghany Mountains." This conversation was reported by the Reverend Dr. Gordon,' who had it on good enough authority to make it credible. It is confirmed by everything in Washington's character. Rather than submit and accept whatever punishment or mercy might be vouchsafed, he was ready to retreat into that Ohio country he had explored, willing to become an outlaw, a Robin Hood, keeping up a guerilla war on tyranny. He would turn Indian rather than return English. The all but incredible thing is, not that he should have pondered such a scheme, but that he escaped having to carry it out. The Congress that had made him Dictator had lacked the legal authority to create such an extra-legal office. It had simply invented its own authority to exist, and now it was seeking a new hiding place for its frail being. Congress had loaded its effects into wagons, especially the printing press from which it issued its edicts, and also its money, which General Putnam could not persuade the Philadelphians to accept at face value in spite of his threats of death and destruction. Nobody has ever succeeded in forcing money to be worth more than it actually is worth. People are eager to believe in everything mythical except money. The government of the United States was on wheels in December, 1776, and the Congress was driven out of its capital, as it would be again thirty-six years later, when the English came again. Fifty years after that, President Lincoln's government would be packed "in a valise" against the invasion of the Virginians under Robert E. Lee. Though Washington caught from the drooping hand of that Congress the awful torch of power, he did not apply it to the destruction of liberty. Julius Cæsar accepted from the Roman Senate the name of dictator and used the army for his own aggrandizement. He would have perverted the ancient republic into a kingdom if his own friends had not stabbed him; and even then his avengers turned it into an empire. The noble William of Orange, made Stadtholder to save the Netherlands from Spain, established himself as king under a name that smelt no sweeter after it had become hereditary. The Protector Cromwell consolidated his own power and left it to his son. During Washington's lifetime a young Corsican soldier was on the way up from poverty to dazzling tyranny. Called to honors in the French republic, he would begin to clutch at power on power until he had not only crowned |