quiet place, as one or
two of his early letters indicate. Yet there too he did with all his
might what his hands found to do, and soon proved that not only his
work, but his social qualities, were endearing him to new friends, some
of whom remembered him with pleasure during their own long lives; one of
them saying of Nathan Hale in her own old age, "Everybody loved him, he
was so sprightly, intelligent, and kind," and, she added withal, "and
_so_ handsome!" He had many correspondents among classmates and
friends. Sometimes he was stimulated to put his thoughts into rhyme by
some poetical epistle he received. One such was from Benjamin Tallmadge,
then in Wethersfield.

Tallmadge had apologized for his muse and Hale, in pure boyish fun, with
a fine disregard of whether he was invoking the muse or mounting
Pegasus, replied as follows:

"But here, I think you're wrong, to blame
Your gen'rous muse and call her lame,
For when arriv'd no mark was found
Of weakness, lameness, sprain or wound."

Then, invoking her himself, he describes her as if she were indeed the
winged steed,

"With me in charge (a grievous load!)
Along the way she lately trode,
In all, she gave no fear or pain,
Unless, at times, to hold the rein."

At last, on his supposed arrival at Wethersfield, he invites Tallmadge's
judgment on the appearance of the equine muse, thus:

"Now judge, unless entirely sound
If she could bear me such a round.
It's certain then your muse is heal'd,
Or else, came sound from Weathersfield."

Before the end of the first term (October, 1773, to mid-March, 1774) in
East Haddam, however, his work had aroused attention elsewhere, and in
May, 1774, he took charge of a school in New London, called the "Union
School,"--a larger school and a more lucrative position than that at
East Haddam. In it Latin, English, arithmetic, and writing were taught.
The salary was seventy pounds a year with a prospect of an increase, and
he was allowed to teach private classes as well.

It will not surprise those acquainted with human nature that, as we will
allow him to tell in a letter to a relative, he soon had a class of some
twenty young ladies between the unusual hours of five and seven in the
morning! It does not take a very vivid imagination to picture the
vivacity of these twenty young ladies, the becomingness of their simple
but pretty gowns, and the zest with which each studied; nor, on the
other hand, the