10. THE MINUTE-MAN. GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS (1824-18-) was born in Rhode Island. He was intimate with Hawthorne, Emerson, and Thoreau, and for eighteen months was a member of the Brook Farm Community. Later he traveled in Europe, and wrote Lotus Eating and Nile Notes. On his return to America he became connected editorially with the New York Tribune and with Putnam's Monthly. In the latter, his charming sketches composing the Potiphar Papers and Prue and I first appeared. He is now editor of Harper's Weekly. Mr. Curtis is full of a kindly humor, sometimes mildly sarcastic, but never coarse. He has a wide command of the English language. 1. 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 the 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 minute-man of the Revolution. He 2. The minute-man 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 minute-man of the Revolution! He was the old, the middle-aged, the young. 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. 3. He was James Hayward, of Acton, twenty-two years old, foremost in that deadly race from Concord to Charlestown, 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, "I started with forty balls; I have three left. I never did 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." The 4. This was the minute-man of the Revolution! 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, 1 the brilliant Townshend, 2 the reckless Hillsborough3 derided, declaimed, denounced, laid unjust taxes, and sent troops to collect them, and the plain Boston Puritan laid his finger on the vital point of the tremendous controversy, and held to it inexorably. 5. 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 hour had come. Definitions.-4. Hos'tile, warlike, unfriendly. Hostility is a positive and open opposition to the wishes of others. De rid ́ed, mocked, made sport of in a scornful manner. A person derides when he ceases to be good-humored in his fault-finding, and becomes bitter and sour. It indicates settled anger or hate. In ĕx'ora bly, so as not to be moved. 5. Writ, a writing proceeding from the proper authority commanding the performance or non-perjormance of some act or acts by the person to whom directed. In law a term originally applied only to summons of importance. NOTES.-I. George Grenville, an English statesman, born 1712, died 1770. 2. Charles Townshend, born 1725, died 1767; notorious as advocating the levying of duties on the American colonies. Hillsborough, born 1715, died 1793; associated with the above in the ministry of England. 3. Eari 11. THE EARTH. WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING (1780-1842) was born in Rhode Island. He studied at Harvard College where he graduated in 1798, and in 1803 was settled as pastor of the Federal-Street Church in Boston. Small in person and of extreme sensibility, he early impaired his health by the rigorous discipline to which he subjected himself, and carried the effects of this practice through life. Dr. Channing was of a retiring disposition and disliked notoriety. Hence he was prone to underrate his own work, but was always warm in his appreciation of whatever was good in others. He had a remarkably pure, clear, and polished style. 1. My highway is unfeatured air, 2. I rest forever on my way, Rolling around the happy sun; 3. My heart hath pulses like their own; 4. The forests and the mountains high- 5. Ye are so cheerful in your minds, 6. No leaf may fall, no pebble roll, Are mirrored in their round abode. 12. THE NEIGHBOR-IN-LAW. LYDIA MARIA CHILD (1802-1880) was born in Massachusetts. Her first novel, Hobomok, was written in six weeks and published when the author was but nineteen. From this time till her death, a period of nearly sixty years, Mrs. Child was one of the foremost writers in America, and her numerous books, numbering nearly fifty, attest her popularity. She early became interested in the anti-slavery movement, and in 1841 in connection with her husband she assumed the editorial labors of the Standard, which she directed for more than twenty years. Mrs. Child had a large appreciation of life and its opportunities, and wrote of it with a freedom and sympathy which constitutes the chief charm of her works. 66 I. I. "So you are going to live in the same building with Hetty Turnpenny," said Mrs. Lane to Mrs. Fairweather; 'you will find nobody to envy you. If her temper does not prove too much even for your good nature, it will surprise all who know her. We lived there a year, and that is as long as anybody ever tried it.” 2. "Poor Hetty!" replied Mrs. Fairweather; "she has had much to harden her. Her mother died too early for her to remember; her father was very severe with her; and the only lover she ever had borrowed the savings of her years |