unker Hill, in that State, picked me up from the bottom
of the works, where, for want of pickaxes, I had been, as I told you,
serving as a trenching, tool, and made himself my better-half and
commander-in-chief. Excuse a stately phrase; but, after the battle of
Bunker Hill, I never could screw up my muzzle to call any man master or
owner again.

We found only a few thousand men and muskets there, principally from
Virginia, Pennsylvania, and the Jerseys, with a few companies of New
Englanders; and a steadier, sturdier set of men than these last never
breathed. They had enlisted for six months only, and their time was
out; but they never spoke of quitting the field.

It was now December, in the midst of snow and ice; and not a foot among
them that did not come bleeding to the frozen path it trod. But, night
after night, the men relieved each other to mount guard, though the
provision chest was well nigh empty; and, day after day, they scoured
the country for the chance of supplies, appearing to the enemy on half
a dozen points in the course of the day; making him think the
provincials, as we were scornfully called, ten times as numerous as we
really were. But alas, I am old, I find, and lose the thread of my
story. It was of Washington I meant to speak.

Nobody could know General Washington that had not seen him as we did,
at that dark hour of the struggle. It seemed as if that man never
slept. All day he was planning, directing, contriving; and all night
long he would write--write--write; letters to Congress, begging them to
give him full powers, and all would go well, for he did not want power
for himself, but only power to serve them; letters to the generals in
the north, warning, comforting, and advising them; letters to his
family and friends, bidding them look at him and do as he did; letters
to influential men every where, entreating them to enlist men and money
for the holy cause.

He never rested; and, with the cold gray dawning, would order out his
horse and ride through and around the miserable tents, and where we
often slept under the bare heavens, and every heart was of bolder and
better cheer as he passed.

His look never changed. It was just the same steady face, whatever went
on before it; whether he saw us provincials beaten back, or watched a
thousand British regulars pile their arms after the victory at Trenton.

He looked as he does in the great picture in Faneuil Hall, on the
right, as you stan