Nathan Hale Part 2

As a teacher he combined unusual tact and manly dignity, making his discipline in school as effective as it was reasonable. He also proved to be as skillful in imparting knowledge as he had been in acquiring it, and his success as a teacher was a.s.sured from the outset.

His first school was in East Haddam, Connecticut. There was then much wealth and business activity in the town, although, to a man fresh from college and the city, it appeared to be a very quiet place, as one or two of his early letters indicate. Yet there too he did with all his might what his hands found to do, and soon proved that not only his work, but his social qualities, were endearing him to new friends, some of whom remembered him with pleasure during their own long lives; one of them saying of Nathan Hale in her own old age, "Everybody loved him, he was so sprightly, intelligent, and kind," and, she added withal, "and _so_ handsome!" He had many correspondents among cla.s.smates and friends. Sometimes he was stimulated to put his thoughts into rhyme by some poetical epistle he received. One such was from Benjamin Tallmadge, then in Wethersfield.

Tallmadge had apologized for his muse and Hale, in pure boyish fun, with a fine disregard of whether he was invoking the muse or mounting Pegasus, replied as follows:

"But here, I think you're wrong, to blame Your gen'rous muse and call her lame, For when arriv'd no mark was found Of weakness, lameness, sprain or wound."

Then, invoking her himself, he describes her as if she were indeed the winged steed,

"With me in charge (a grievous load!) Along the way she lately trode, In all, she gave no fear or pain, Unless, at times, to hold the rein."

At last, on his supposed arrival at Wethersfield, he invites Tallmadge's judgment on the appearance of the equine muse, thus:

"Now judge, unless entirely sound If she could bear me such a round.

It's certain then your muse is heal'd, Or else, came sound from Weathersfield."

Before the end of the first term (October, 1773, to mid-March, 1774) in East Haddam, however, his work had aroused attention elsewhere, and in May, 1774, he took charge of a school in New London, called the "Union School,"--a larger school and a more lucrative position than that at East Haddam. In it Latin, English, arithmetic, and writing were taught.

The salary was seventy pounds a year with a prospect of an increase, and he was allowed to teach private cla.s.ses as well.

It will not surprise those acquainted with human nature that, as we will allow him to tell in a letter to a relative, he soon had a cla.s.s of some twenty young ladies between the unusual hours of five and seven in the morning! It does not take a very vivid imagination to picture the vivacity of these twenty young ladies, the becomingness of their simple but pretty gowns, and the zest with which each studied; nor, on the other hand, the ill-concealed, bantering interest of the big brothers of the same,--asking perhaps, now and then, with mock gravity, if mother thought Patty would be so prompt every morning at five o'clock if old Parson Browning were the teacher!

But whatever might have been the dominant interest of the young ladies, "Master Hale" was quite as practical in his teaching in the early hours of the day as with the boys in the later cla.s.ses. An uncle of his, Samuel Hale, was for many years at the head of the best private school in New Hampshire, numbering among his pupils some of the leaders in Revolutionary times. To him, September 24, 1774, Nathan wrote a letter from which we give the following extracts:

"My own employment is at present the same that you have spent your days in. I have a school of thirty-two boys, about half Latin, the rest English. The salary allowed me is 70 per annum. In addition to this I have kept, during the summer, a morning school, between the hours of five and seven, of about 20 young ladies for which I have received 6s [shillings] a scholar, by the quarter. Many of the people are gentleman of sense and merit. They are desirous that I would continue and settle in the school, and propose a considerable increase in wages. I am much at a loss whether to accept their proposals. Your advice in this matter, coming from an uncle and from a man who has spent his life in the business, would, I think, be the best I could possibly receive. A few lines on this subject and also to acquaint me with the welfare of your family ... will be much to the satisfaction of

Your most dutiful Nephew, NATHAN HALE."

A letter to Enoch Hale, containing allusions to the excited feeling in the colony at this time, runs as follows:

NEW LONDON, Sept. 8th. 1774.

DEAR BROTHER.

I have a word to write and a moment to write it in. I received yours of yesterday this morning. Agreeable to your desire I will endeavour to get the cloth and carry it on Sat.u.r.day. I have no news. No liberty-pole is erected or erecting here; but the people seem much more spirited than they did before the alarm. Parson Peters of Hebron, I hear, has had a second visit paid him by the sons of liberty in Windham. His treatment, and the concessions he made I have not as yet heard. I have not heard from home since

I came from there.

MR. E. HALE. LYME.

Your loving Brother NATHAN HALE.

A letter from Hale to his friend the senior Dr. aeneas Munson, of New Haven, has been mentioned. It runs as follows:

NEW LONDON, November 30, 1774

SIR: I am very happily situated here. I love my employment; find many friends among strangers; have time for scientific study; and seem to fill the place a.s.signed me with satisfaction. I have a school of more than thirty boys to instruct, about half of them in Latin; and my salary is satisfactory. During the summer I had a morning cla.s.s of young ladies--about a score--from five to seven o'clock; so you see my time is pretty fully occupied, profitably, I hope to my pupils and to their teacher.

Please accept for yourself and Mrs. Munson the grateful thanks of one who will always remember the kindness he ever experienced whenever he visited your abode.

Your friend NATHAN HALE.

On one occasion, as Hale left his house after paying a visit, Dr. Munson observed, "That man is a diamond of the first water, calculated to excel in any station he a.s.sumes. He is a gentleman and a scholar, and last, though not least of his qualifications, a Christian."

The son of Dr. Munson (who bore his father's name), when an aged man, said: "I was greatly impressed with Hale's scientific knowledge, evinced during his conversation with my father. I am sure he was equal to Andre in solid acquirements, and his taste for art and talents as an artist were quite remarkable. His personal appearance was as notable. He was almost six feet in height, perfectly proportioned, and in figure and deportment he was the most manly man I have ever met. His chest was broad; his muscles were firm; his face wore a most benign expression; his complexion was roseate; his eyes were light blue and beamed with intelligence; his hair was soft and light brown in color, and his speech was rather low, sweet, and musical. His personal beauty and grace of manner were most charming.

"Why, all the girls in New Haven fell in love with him," continued Dr.

Munson, "and wept tears of real sorrow when they heard of his sad fate.

In dress he was always neat; he was quick to lend a helping hand to a being in distress, brute or human; was overflowing with good humor, and was the idol of all his acquaintances."

Young masters of schools, public or private, unmarried and attractive, usually rank next in popularity to other professional men,--ministers, lawyers, or doctors, as the case may be,--and a boy of nineteen, the object of as much attention as Nathan Hale must have received, might well be pardoned if his head had been slightly turned, in thus becoming the admired teacher of a large cla.s.s of young ladies. One special mark of stability of character appears to have characterized this young man in a greater degree than is always the case at the present day. Detached as he was, as he supposed irrevocably, from the woman he loved, he appears to have carried himself with almost middle-aged dignity, and, what is not a little to his credit, even his intimate friends among his cla.s.smates could not, by the most delicate cross-questioning, draw from him anything suggesting more than a pleasant interest in any of the young ladies with whom he was thrown in contact.

A letter that will be given in its proper place shows his courteous and cordial interest in the little city he left when he entered the army; yet it is rather a noteworthy fact that one of his cla.s.smates, writing to him during his camp life, had to suggest that, as the young ladies he had taught were always inquiring when he had heard from "Master," it would doubtless give them pleasure if he could find time to write some one of them a note with friendly messages to others, to show that he still remembered them.

Many young men would hardly have needed such a suggestion. But Nathan Hale, so far as we can learn, while given to warm friendships among his cla.s.smates, and to the cultivation, while in New Haven, Haddam, and New London, of the society of the best families, appears, from the beginning, to have taken life seriously. Disappointed in the love of the one woman for whom he cared, he had turned with sincere absorption to the work to which he felt himself called before entering on the theological course it is thought that his father had planned for him.

There is further evidence of Hale's notable gifts as a teacher. Colonel Samuel Green, who had been a pupil of Hale in New London, said of him, in oldtime phrase: "Hale was a man peculiarly engaging in his manners--these were mild and genteel. The scholars, old and young, were attached to him. They loved him for his tact and amiability.

"He was wholly without severity and had a wonderful control over boys.

He was sprightly, ardent, and steady--bore a fine moral character and was respected highly by all his acquaintances. The school in which he taught was owned by the first gentlemen in New London, all of whom were exceedingly gratified by Hale's skill and a.s.siduity."

A lady of New London who was for some time an inmate of the same family with Hale, adds her testimony:

"His capacity as a teacher was highly appreciated both by parents and pupils. His simple and unostentatious manner of imparting right views and feelings to less cultivated understandings was unsurpa.s.sed by any other person I have ever known."

He was, as we see, a successful teacher, and, as we learn elsewhere, had serious thoughts of remaining a teacher.

Unexpectedly, however, events verified the truth of the old adage, "Man proposes, G.o.d disposes." A great historical drama was to be enacted before the eyes of the wondering world, and events were ripening that were to form a great epoch in history.

America was being led first to protest against the unjust exactions laid upon its people, and then to resist the oppressions that were being forced upon it. Gradually the idea prevailed that a taxation which might have been acceptable, if coupled with representation in Parliament, was absolutely intolerable without representation, and the Stamp Act in 1765 struck the first note of intense opposition. Thenceforward the political clouds grew darker and the warning incidents multiplied.

And yet, as a people, Americans were walking as if their personal plans lay easily in their own control. Scores of young men were fitting themselves for ordinary callings, Nathan Hale among them. His father's plans combining with his own appeared to be that he was to teach for a while, and then follow his brother Enoch into the ministry. As it proved, his days as a teacher were numbered. He was never to enter a pulpit, though he was to utter one sentence that, graven upon bronze or granite, will last while America lasts. He was to teach, by his last, unpremeditated words, and by an example more potent than any other in American history, what all generations of Americans must venerate--the sublimity of a complete sacrifice.

Smoldering discontent on the part of the Americans, waxing stronger and stronger for a decade, and the aggressive course of action on the part of the British authorities, finally culminated in a sudden outbreak, as matches applied to gunpowder; and on the 19th of April, 1775, the first blood of the American Revolution was shed. Settlement after settlement, big and little, learned the facts as rapidly as couriers on horseback could carry them, and the thirteen colonies arrayed themselves against one of the most powerful monarchies of the world.

The story is too well known to need recalling here, save as it draws Nathan Hale toward his doom. Within a few days after the fatal 19th of April, four thousand Connecticut volunteers were on their way to Boston to help Ma.s.sachusetts in its earliest struggle with the English.

Ununiformed, undisciplined, straight from whatever had been their ordinary vocation, with whatever they owned in the way of arms and ammunition, they went hurrying toward Boston. Israel Putnam, renowned veteran of the "Old French War," was plowing in his fields at Pomfret, Connecticut, when he heard the stirring news. Leaving his plow in the furrow, he hastened to his house, left a few orders for the management of his farm and the comfort of his family, and marched at the head of a body of volunteers toward the camp near Boston. We are told that, in some households, families sat up all night, the fathers melting their pewter plates into bullets for ammunition to be used by their sons, and the mothers and sisters fashioning for them, with all possible speed, the clothing they could not go without.

On the arrival of the news from Boston, the people in New London at once held a meeting. Hon. Richard Law, District Judge of Connecticut and Chief Justice of the Superior Court, was chairman. Hale was one of the speakers.

At that meeting a company was selected from the already existing militia and ordered to start for Boston the next morning. This company Nathan Hale, with his keen sense of duty, could not then join. But, for a few succeeding weeks, in addition to his regular work in school, he did all in his power to keep alive the interest of the young men in the town concerning their duties as Americans. With his enthusiastic nature, and broad comprehension of what might soon confront the country, it is probable that his seriousness and his activity were never greater than during the few weeks intervening between his speech at the political meeting and his departure from New London to enter the military service of his country.

Of course his becoming a soldier would greatly interfere with the plans that his father had made for him, and he at once wrote home on the subject, stating that "a sense of duty urged him to sacrifice everything for his country"; but he added that as soon as the war was ended he would comply with his father's wishes in regard to a profession. The father was quite as patriotic as the son. He immediately a.s.sented to his son's desires. In those days, however, correspondence could not be conducted so swiftly as at present, and some time must have elapsed before this matter was positively settled between the two. As the war went on, and doubtless none the less whole-heartedly after the news of Nathan's death had been received, Mr. Hale did all he could for the comfort of pa.s.sing soldiers. It is said of him that many a time he sat at the door of his hospitable home and watched for pa.s.sing soldiers that he might take them in and feed them; and, if necessary, lodge and clothe them. He often forbade his household "to use the wool raised upon his farm for home purposes, that it might be woven into blankets for the army."

Anxious as had been young Hale to join the army, he appears to have deferred making any decided plans until he had received the necessary permission from his father. Having received it, he at once took steps for securing his dismissal from his school and his admission into the army. During the weeks of waiting it had become known that he was anxious to enlist, and a military appointment was waiting his acceptance. To secure his dismissal, on July 7 he addressed the following letter to the proprietors of his school,--a letter that for a young man of twenty is as dignified as it is patriotic:

GENTLEMEN: Having received information that a place is allotted me in the army, and being inclined, as I hope for good reasons, to accept it, I am constrained to ask as a favor that which scarce anything else would have induced me to, which is, to be excused from keeping your school any longer. For the purpose of conversing upon this and of procuring another master, some of your number think it best there should be a general meeting of the proprietors.

The time talked of for holding it is six o'clock this afternoon, at the schoolhouse. The year for which I engaged will expire within a fortnight, so that my quitting a few days sooner, I hope, will subject you to no great inconvenience.