nounced to the men of New
York and New England.

No wonder that their military caps came off on Tuesday, that their
arms swung in the air, and their voices burst forth into one loud
acclaim that might have been heard by the British foe then landing on
Staten Island.

As you stand there, and the shadow of old St. Paul swings around and
covers you, shut your eyes and listen. Something of the olden music,
of the loud acclaim, may swing around with the shadow and fall on your
ears, since no motion is ever spent, no sound ever still.

On that night, when the grand burst of enthusiasm had arisen,
Blue-Eyed Boy said to General Washington: "I am afraid, sir, if
Congress had known, they never would have done it, never! It seemed
easy to do it in Philadelphia, where everything is just as it used to
be; but here, with all the British ships riding in, full of soldiers,
and guns enough in them to smash the old State House where they did
it! If they'd only known about the ships!--"

Ah! Blue-Eyed Boy. You didn't keep your eye very close to Congress
Hall in the morning of last Thursday, or you would have heard Mr.
Hancock or Mr. Thompson read to Congress a letter from General
Washington, announcing the arrival of General Howe at Sandy Hook with
one hundred and ten ships of war.

No, no! Blue-Eyed Boy and every other boy; the men who dared to say,
and sign their names to the assertion, "A nation is born to-day," did
not do it under the rosy flush of glorious victory, but in the
fast-coming shadow of mighty Britain, strong in all the power and
radiant with all the pomp of war.

And what had a few little colonies to meet them with? They had, it is
true, a new name, that of "States"; but cannon and camp-kettles alike
were wanting; the small powder mills in the Connecticut hive could
yield them only a fragment of the black honey General Washington cried
for, day and night, from Cambridge to New York; the houses of the
inhabitants, diligently searched for fragments of lead, gave them not
enough; and you know how every homestead in New England was besieged
for the last yard of homespun cloth, that the country's soldiers might
not go coatless by day and tentless at night.

Brave men and women good!

Let us hurrah for them all, if it is a hundred years too late for them
to hear. The men of a hundred years to come will remember our huzzas
of this year, and grow, it may be, the braver and the better for them
all.

But now General Wa