es of
the Revolution" lose aught of their sonorousness at this distant date,
when the reverberation reaches them through a lecture, we here present
an abstract of the opening:

INTRODUCTORY.

"The year 1876 re-echoes the scenes and events of a hundred years ago.
In imagination we make a pilgrimage back to the Revolution. We visit the
fields whereon our ancestors fought for liberty and a Republic. We
follow patriots from Lexington to Yorktown. I see them walking through a
baptism of blood and of fire; their only purpose liberty; their only
incentive duty; their only pride their country; and their only ambition
victory. I see them with Warren and Prescott at Bunker Hill; I see them
with Washington at Valley Forge, hatless, without shoes, half-clad, and
often without food; encamped in fields of snow; patiently enduring the
rigors of a northern winter. I see them pushing their way through the
ice of the Delaware. I see them at Saratoga, at Bennington, at
Princeton, and at Monmouth. I follow Marion and his daring troopers
through the swamps of Georgia and the Carolinas. And, finally, we come
to that immortal day at Yorktown, when Cornwallis surrendered his sword
and command to George Washington.

"All the world is familiar with the causes which led to the struggle for
independence in America. We all know the spirit which animated the
people of the Colonies, from the seizure of Sir Edmond Andross in 1688
to the destruction of the tea in Boston harbor in 1774. No American is
ignorant of the efforts of John Hancock, Samuel Adams, Joseph Warren,
Patrick Henry, Alexander Hamilton, Paul Revere, and others, at clubs, in
newspapers, in pulpits, in the streets, and in coffee-houses, to guide
and prepare the people for the approaching crisis. All the facts from
the beginning to the close of that memorable conflict are given in
school-books, as well as in more pretentious history. But the immediate
cause of the march of the English troops from Boston to Concord seems to
be necessary to a comprehensive view of the subject.

* * * * *

"On the nineteenth of April, 1775, a handful of the yeomanry of
Massachusetts, obeying a common impulse, came hurriedly together,
confronted a force of English regulars outnumbering them ten to one,
received their fire, were repulsed, and left eighteen of their number
dead and wounded on the green in front of Lexington. On the same day, at
Concord, less than four hund