THE MORNING OF THE REVOLUTION1

BY GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS

THE first imposing armed movement against the colonies, on the 19th of April, 1775, did not take the people by surprise. For ten years they had seen the possibility, for five years the probability, and for at least a year the certainty, of the contest. They quietly organized, watched, and waited. The royal governor, Gage, was a soldier, and he had read the signs of the times. He felt the full force of the mighty determination that exalted New England.

Minute companies were everywhere organized, and military supplies were deposited at convenient towns. Everybody was on the alert. Couriers were held ready to alarm the country, and wagons to remove the stores, should the British march.

On Tuesday, the 18th of April, Gage, who had decided to send a force to Concord to destroy the stores, picketed the roads from Boston into Middlesex, to prevent any report of the intended march from spreading into the country. But the very air was electric. In the tension of the popular mind, every sound and sight was significant. In the afternoon, one of the governor's grooms strolled into a stable where John Ballard was cleaning a horse. John Ballard was a Son of Liberty; and when the groom made an idle remark, in nervous English, about

1 From Orations and Addresses by George William Curtis; copyright, 1894, by Harper and Brothers.

From the Statue by Daniel C. French at Concord. George William Curtis delivered an address at the unveiling of the statue, April 19, 1875.

"what would happen to-morrow," John's heart leaped and his hand shook; and asking the groom to finish cleaning the horse, he ran to a friend, who carried the news straight to Paul Revere.

That evening at ten o'clock eight hundred British troops took boat at the foot of the Common and crossed to the Cambridge shore. Gage thought that his secret had been kept. But as the troops crossed, Paul Revere was rowing over the river farther down to Charlestown, having agreed with his friend, Robert Newman, to show lanterns from the belfry of the Old North Church,

"One, if by land, and two, if by sea,"

as a signal of the march of the British.

It was a brilliant April night. The winter had been unusually mild and the spring very forward. The hills were already green; the early grain waved in the fields, and the air was sweet with blossoming orchards. Already the robins whistled, the bluebirds sang, and the benediction of peace rested upon the landscape. Under the cloudless moon the soldiers silently marched, and Paul Revere swiftly rode, galloping through Medford and West Cambridge, rousing every house as he went, spurring for Lexington and evading the British patrols who had been sent out to stop the news.

Stop the news! Already the village church bells were beginning to ring the alarm, as the pulpits beneath them had been ringing for many a year. In the awakening houses, lights flashed from window to window. Drums beat faintly far away and on every side. Signal guns

flashed and echoed. The watchdogs barked; the cocks

crew.

Stop the news! Stop the sunrise! The murmuring night trembled with the summons so earnestly expected, so dreaded, so desired. If the stern alarm of that April night seemed to many a wistful and loyal heart to portend the passing glory of British dominion and the tragical chance of war, it also whispered to them with prophetic inspiration, "Good will to men; America is born!"

There is a tradition that long before the troops reached Lexington an unknown horseman thundered at the door of Captain Joseph Robbins in Acton, waking every man and woman and the babe in the cradle, shouting that the regulars were marching to Concord and that the rendezvous was the Old North Bridge. Captain Robbins's son, a boy of ten years, heard the summons in the garret where he lay, and in a few minutes was on his father's old mare — a young Paul Revere - galloping along the road to rouse Captain Isaac Davis, who commanded the minutemen of Acton.

Davis was a young man of thirty, a gunsmith by trade, brave and thoughtful, and tenderly fond of his wife and four children. The company had assembled at his shop, formed, and marched a little way, when he halted them and returned for a moment to his house. He said to his wife, "Take good care of the children," kissed her, turned to his men, gave the order to march, and saw his home no more. Such was the history of that night in how many homes!

The hearts of those men and women of Middlesex might break, but they could not waver. They had counted the cost. They knew what and whom they served; and as the midnight summons came, they started up and answered, "Here am I!"

Abridged.

CONCORD HYMN

BY RALPH WALDO EMERSON

By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April's breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood,
And fired the shot heard round the world.

The foe long since in silence slept;

Alike the conqueror silent sleeps;

And Time the ruined bridge has swept

Down the dark stream which seaward creeps.

On this green bank, by this soft stream,
We set to-day a votive stone;
That memory may their deed redeem,
When, like our sires, our sons are gone.

Spirit, that made those heroes dare
To die, and leave their children free,
Bid Time and Nature gently spare

The shaft we raise to them and thee.