never quitting it but with
life, but at present there seems an opportunity for more extended
public service.

The kindness expressed to me by the people of the place, but
especially the proprietors of the school, will always be very
gratefully remembered by, gentlemen, with respect, your humble
servant,

NATHAN HALE

CHAPTER IV

A CALL TO ARMS

The place "allotted" to him was that of lieutenant in the third company
of the 7th Connecticut regiment, commanded by Colonel Charles Webb. No
doubt exists that Lieutenant Nathan Hale was the same Nathan Hale who
had won distinction in all his college work, in his subsequent teaching,
and in all the events thus far associated with his early manhood, with
this difference; he was now lifted to a line of service that in his
opinion seemed the highest possible for him to follow, and no one who
studies his subsequent course can question that in this following he
found the loftiest consecration thus far possible to him. Perhaps
unconsciously he was to verify the poet's assertion,

"So nigh is grandeur to our dust,
So near is God to man,
When Duty whispers low, _Thou must_,
The youth replies, _I can._"

With no trace of merely personal ambition, but with that splendid power
of absorption in duty as in work, Nathan Hale followed in the steps of
those devoted American patriots whose blood, so freely shed at
Lexington, was calling upon their countrymen to shed theirs as freely,
should duty demand it.

Dead almost one hundred and forty years, we still are thrilled by proofs
of the splendid manhood henceforth to be so prominent in every remaining
day of Hale's brief life. A few letters to friends, a fairly
comprehensive diary for a few months, his camp-book, and the
recollections of a few of the officers and of his body-servant, give a
moderately complete picture of Nathan Hale for a few brief weeks, during
which time he had been doing all in his power to perfect himself and the
men under him in the duties of soldiers.

By the middle of September the Connecticut troops, having received
orders from General Washington to proceed to the camp near Boston, the
7th Regiment, containing Lieutenant Hale's company, went to the spot
appointed, remaining there during the winter, and leaving for New York,
again by Washington's orders, in the spring. Of these intervening
months, so momentous to the little army whose many members were
i