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âNo! goinâ to Lexington, after corn. Can I do anything for you?â
âWell, no, I âxpect not. When be you a-cominâ back?â
âI donât know.â
âWell, go long! good-luck to ye; keep to windâard oâ squalls, George.â
Long nodded, and George drove on. That day the whole village of Westbury was in an uproar. News had come from Boston that the British were about to send out forces to possess themselves of all the military stores in the country, and forestall rebellion by rendering it helpless. From every corner of every farm and village, young men and old mustered; from every barn, horses of all sizes and descriptions were driven out and saddled; rusty muskets, balls of all shapes and of any available metal that would melt and run, disabled broadswords, horse-pistols, blunderbusses, whatever wore any resemblance to a weapon, or could be rendered serviceable to that end,âall were hunted out, cleaned, mended, and laid ready;âan array that might have made a properly drilled and equipped army smile in contempt, but whose deficiencies were more than supplied by iron sinews, true blood, resolve and desperate courage.
Sally and Aunt Poll partook the gale of patriotism. They scoured the âole queenâs armâ to brilliancy; they ran bullets by the hour; baked bread and brewed Spring beer, with no more definite purpose than a general conviction that men must and would eat, as the men of their house certainly did, in the intervals of repairing harness, filling powder-horns and shot-belts, trotting over to the tavern after news, and coming back to retail it, till Aunt Poll began to imagine she heard the distant strokes of a battering-ram, and rushing out in terror to assure herself, discovered it to be only Sam Pequot, an old Indian, who, with the apathy of his race, was threshing in the barn.
Aunt Poll took down Josephus to refresh her memory, and actually drew a laugh from Sallyâs grave lips by confiding to her this extreme horror of the case; a laugh she forgave, since Sally reassured her by recommending to her notice the fact that Jerusalem had stone walls that were more difficult to climb than stone fences. As for Sally, she thought of George, all day of George, all night; and while the next day deepened toward noon, was still thinking of him, when in rushed Long Snapps, tarpaulin in hand, full of news and horror.
âI swan! weâve got it now!â said he. âThem darned Britishers sot out fur Concord last night, to board our decks anâ plunder the magazine; the boys heerd onât, and they was ready over to Lexinâton, waitinâ round the meetinâus; they stood toât, anâ that old powder monkey Pitcairn sung out to throw down their arms, darned rebels; anâ cause they didnât muster to his whistle, he let fly at âem like split; anâ thereâs some killed anâ more wounded; pretty much all on âem our folks, though they did giv the regâlars one round oâ ball afore they run.â
âHooray!â shouted Zekle; âthatâs the talk; guess theyâll sing smaller next time!â
âTheyâll do moreân that, Zekle,â responded Long; âthis aânât but the beginninâ oâ sorrers, as Parson Marsh sez, sez he; thereâll be a hull gulf stream oâ blood, afore them darned regâlars knows the color onât well enough to lay their course.â
Sally glided past Long, and plucked him by the sleeve, unseen by the rest. He followed her into the shed. She was ghastly pale. âLong,â said she, hurriedly, âdid you hear who? was anybody shot?â
âBless ye, gal! a hull school on âem was shot; there wasnât many went to the bottom, though; hanât heerd no names.â
âBut George?â gasped Sally; âhe went to Lexington yesterday.â
âWell, I am took aback!â growled Long. âI swear I never thought onât. Iâll go see.â
âCome back and tell me?â whispered Sally.
âLord-a-massy, yes, child! jest as soonâs I know myself trewly! but I shanât know nothinâ more till sundown, I expect. Desire Trowbridge is a-ridinâ post; heâll come through âbout that time with news.â
Long did not come back for several hours, some time after sundown, when he found Sally in the shed, waiting for him. She saw the news in his face. âDead?â said she, clutching at the old sailorâs hand.
âNo! no! he aânât slipt his moorinsâ yet, but he is badly stove about the figger-head; heâs got a ball through his head somewhere, anâ another in his leg; and he aânât within hail; donât hear no speakinâ-trumpets; fact is, Sally, heâs in for the dockyard a good spell, ef he aânât broke up hull and all.â
âWho shot him?â whispered Sally.
âThatâs the best onât, gal; heâs took anâ tacked beautiful; he went into port at Lexinâton yesterday, and heerinâ there all sides oâ the story, anâ how them critters sot up for to thieve away our stores, he got kinder riled at the hull crew, like a common-sense feller, anâ when Pitcairn come along, George finally struck his colors, run up a new un to the mast-head, borrered a musket, anâ jined the milishy, anâ got shot by them cussed regâlars fur his pains; an ef he doos die, Iâll hev a figger cut on a stun myself, to tell folks he was a rebel and an honest man arter all.â
âWhere is he?â asked Sally in another whisper.
âHeâs to the tavern there in Lexinâton. There aânât nobody along with him, cause his fatherâs gone to Bostin to see âbout not gettinâ scomfishkated, or arter a protection, or sumthin.â
âAnd his mother is dead,â said Sally, slowly. âLong! I must go to Lexington to-night, on the pillion, and you must go with me. Fatherâs got too much rheumatiz to ask it of him.â
âWell!â said Long, after a protracted stare at Sally,ââwimmin is the oddest craft that ever sailed. I swan, when I sight âem I donât know a main-top-sail from a flyinâ jib! Goinâ to take care oâ George, be ye?â
âYes,â said Sally, meekly.
Long rolled the inseparable quid in his cheek, and slyly drawled out, âW-ell, if ye must, ye must! I aânât a-goinâ ter stand in the way of yer dooty!â
Sally was too far away to hear, or she might have smiled.
Uncle Zeke and Aunt Poll were to be told and coaxed into assent;âno very hard task; for George Tucker was a favorite of âZekielâs, and now he had turned rebel, the only grudge he had ever owed him was removed; he was only too glad to help him in any way. Aunt Pollâs sole trouble was lest Sally should take cold. The proprieties, those gods of modern social worship, as well as their progenitors, the improprieties, were unknown to these simple souls; they did things because they were right and wrong. They were not nice according to Swiftâs definition, nor proper in the mode of the best society, but they were good and pure; are the disciples and lecturers of the âproperâ equally so?
Sallyâs simple preparations were quickly made. By nine oâclock she was safe on the pillion behind Long Snapps, folded in Aunt Pollâs red joseph, and provided with saddle-bags full of comforts and necessaries. The night was dark, but Sally did not feel any fear; not Tam OâShanterâs experience could have shaken the honest little creatureâs courage, when George filled the perspective before her. The way was lonely; the hard road echoed under the old cart-horseâs hoofs; many a black and desolate tract of forest lay across their twenty milesâ ride; more than once the tremulous shriek of a screech-owl smote ominously on Sallyâs wakeful sense, and quavered away like a dying groan; more than once a mournful whippoorwill cried out in pain and expostulation, and in the young leaves a shivering wind foreboded evil;âbut they rode on. Presently Sallyâs drooping head rose erect; she listened; she laid her hand on the bridle. âStop, Long!â said she. âI hear horsesâ feet, and shouts.â
âLook here!â said Long, after a momentâs listening, âthereâs breakers ahead, Sally; letâs heave to in these âere piny bushes side oâ the track; itâs pitch dark, mebbe theyâll go by.â
He reined the horse from the road, and forced him into a group of young hemlocks, which hid them entirely from passers by. Just as he was well ensconced, a company of British cavalry rode up, broken and disorderly enough, cursing and swearing at the Yankees, and telling to unseen ears a bloody story of Concord and its men. Sally trembled, but it was with indignation, not fear, and as soon as the last hoof-beat died away, she urged Long forward; they regained the road, and made their way at once to George in Lexington.
Is it well to paint, even in failing words, such emotions as Sally fought with and conquered in that hour? Whoever has stood by the bed of a speechless, hopeless, unconscious human being, in whom their own soul lived and suffered, will know these pangs without my interpretation. Whoever knows them not need not so anticipate. If Sally had been less a woman, I might have had more to say; but she was only a woman, and loved George, so she went on in undisturbed self-control, and untiring exertion, to nurse him.
The doctor said he could not live; Long said he was booked for Davy Jones; the minister prayed for âour dying brotherâ;âbut Sally said he should live, and he did. After weeks of patient care he knew her; after more weeks he spoke,âwords few, but precious; and when accumulating months brought to the battlefields of America redder stains than even patriotic blood had splashed upon their leaves,âwhen one nation began to hope, and another to fear, both hope and fear had shaken hands with Sally and said good-bye. She was married to George Tucker, and, with the prospect of a crippled husband for life, was perfectly happy; too happy not to laugh, when, the day after their wedding, sitting on the door-sill of the old Westbury homestead, with George and Long Snapps, George said, âWould you ever have come to take care of me, Sally, if Iâd âaâ been shot on the side of the regâlars?â
Sally looked at him, and then looked away.
âI âxpect sheâd âaâ done her dooty,â said Long Snapps dryly; and Sally laughed.
THE MANCHESTER EXHIBITION.
In a number of the âIllustrated News,â not long since, there was what professed to be a view of Manchester. It represented a thousand tall factory-chimneys rising out of a gray mist, and surmounted by a heavy, drifting cloud of smoke. And in truth a view not very different from this was presented to any one who, standing at the entrance of the Palace of the Exhibition of Art Treasures, turned and looked back before going within. Two miles off lies the body of the great workshop-city, already stretching its begrimed arms in the direction of the Exhibition. The vast flat expanse of brick walls, diversified by countless chimney and occasional steeples, now and then interrupted by the insertion of a low shed or an enormous warehouse, offers no single object upon which the eye or the imagination can rest with pleasure. Such a view was never to be seen in the world before this century; a city built merely by trade, built for the home of labor, of machines, and of engines, and for the dwelling-place (one cannot call it the home) of crowds of human beings, whose value is, for the most part, estimated according to the development of their machine-like qualities. Beauty is not consulted here. In those places in or near the city, where Nature, reluctant to be driven utterly away, still tries to keep a foothold, she is parched and scorched by the feverish breath of forges and furnaces. Standing here, one may see the cloud of smoke, which waves in the wind like a pall over the city, slowly moving and
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