metal.

Ah, what a set of men were those! I felt the firm trip-hammer of all
their pulses beat through the whole fight, for we stood in platoon,
shoulder to shoulder. I felt my kindred with every one of them. They
had more steel in their nerves and more iron in their blood than other
men. Not a man cared a straw for his life, so he saved from wrong and
bondage the lives of them that should come after him.

That day's work raised hope in every man's heart through the land. Said
I not well that it was the most glorious of my life?

I have but little more to say. I have said more than I meant to, more
perhaps than was wise to say of my own glory. But the thought of those
brave days of old makes one too talkative.

I must tell you, however, how I at last came here. Judah Loring brought
me home safe; he was a very honest fellow, and seeing the initials
scratched on my butt-end, and 'Lexington' underneath, he went there on
purpose to find to whom I belonged.

My friend William claimed me, and I was again placed behind the old
clock in the little parlor. His mother looked very calm, and almost
happy, but not as she once did; she sighed heavily when William brought
me home. William's wound in his arm healed after a while, but his arm
was disabled. By great self-denial and exertion, his mother had got him
into college, and he was to be a schoolmaster.

The sight of me was painful to this good woman, and she gave me to
uncle John who kept me safely and, on the whole, honorably till his son
placed me here.

There is one disgrace I have met with which, in good faith, however
unwillingly, I ought to mention. Uncle John used me to kill skunks
occasionally. This there was no great harm in doing, only he should not
have talked about it. I disliked, it, however, exceedingly.

Once, I am told, when he was in the South, some southern gentleman, for
some trifling offense, challenged him.

Uncle John was told that he, as the party challenged, might choose his
weapons.

"Well," he said to his enemy, "if you will wait till I can send for my
skunk gun, I am ready for you."

I have since, I do hate to say it, been called the skunk gun
repeatedly. To be sure, no one that has any reverence in his nature
speaks of me in this way. Uncle John had not much, but his son, the
father of that little girl, treats me with due respect, and forbids
them to call me the skunk gun.

I was once the defender of liberty, and am ready to be so again