ignominious death, was not lacking. Captain Nathan Hale, a quiet,
studious spirit, just graduated from Yale College, volunteered to enter
the British lines on Long Island as a spy. He was caught, and soon swung
from an apple tree in Colonel Rutgers's orchard, a corpse. Bible and
religious ministrations denied him, his letters to mother and sister
destroyed, women standing by and sobbing, he met his fate without a
tremor. "I only regret," comes his voice from yon rude scaffold, "that I
have but one life to give for my country." It is a shame that America so
long had no monument to this heroic man. One almost rejoices that the
British captain, Cunningham, author of the cruelty to Hale, himself met
death on the gallows, in London, 1791. How different from Hale's the
treatment bestowed upon Andre, the British spy who fell into our hands.
He was fed from Washington's table, and supported to his execution by
every manifestation of sympathy for his suffering.

[Illustration: Portrait.]
John Paul Jones.

The stanch and useful loyalty of the New England clergy in the
Revolution has been much dwelt upon--none too much, however. With them
should be mentioned the Rev. James Caldwell, Presbyterian pastor at
Elizabeth, N. J., who, when English soldiers raided the town, and its
defenders were short of wadding, tore up his hymn-book for their use,
urging: "Give them Watts, boys, give them Watts."

No fiercer naval battle was ever fought than when Jones, in the old and
rotten Bon Homme Richard, grappled with the new British frigate Serapis.
Yard-arm to yardarm, port-hole to port-hole, the fight raged for hours.
Three times both vessels were on fire. The Serapis's guns tore a
complete breach in the Richard from main-mast to stern. The Richard was
sinking, but the intrepid Jones fought on, and the Serapis struck.

[Illustration: Hand-to-hand fighting; a shell explodes in the
background.]
Fight between the Bon Homme Richard and the Serapis.

As the roll of Revolutionary officers is called, what matchless figures
file past the mind's eye! We see stalwart Ethan Allen entering
Ticonderoga too early in the morning to find its commander in a
presentable condition, and demanding possession "in the name of Almighty
God and the Continental Congress "--destined, himself, in a few months,
to be sailing down the St. Lawrence in irons, bound for long captivity
in England. We behold gallant Prescott leisurely promenading the Bunker
Hill