Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year Part 15

At Chesapeake Bay an exasperating delay occurred, for 15 there were not sufficient vessels to transport the army over the water, and for a time the success of the whole expedition was threatened. But Washington was in no mood to be blocked by obstacles of this sort. If his troops could not be ferried down the bay, they must march around it, and 20 march many of them did, their general obtaining the first glimpse he had had in six years of his beloved Mount Vernon as he swept by, and on September 28, 1781, his whole force was in front of Yorktown, with success fairly within its grasp. 25

Meanwhile de Gra.s.se's fleet had fiercely a.s.sailed a British squadron which had been sent to the rescue, and after a sharp engagement the French had been able to return to the bay while the British vessels were obliged to retire to New York, leaving Cornwallis with the York River on one 30 side of him, the James River on the other, and the Chesapeake Bay at his back, but no ships to carry him to safety.

Only one chance of escape now remained, and that was to hurl his whole army through the narrow neck of land immediately in front of him and beat a hasty retreat to the south.

But Washington had antic.i.p.ated this desperate move by positive instructions to Lafayette, and acting upon them the 5 young marquis rushed a body of French troops from the fleet into the gap, and the arrival of the American army completely blocked it.

But, though the enemy was now in his clutch, Washington lost no time in tightening his hold, for de Gra.s.se 10 declared that his orders would not allow him to tarry much longer in the Chesapeake, and the failure of the other attempts to work with the French warned him to take no risks on this occasion.

He therefore instantly set the troops at work with pickaxes 15 and shovels throwing up intrenchments, behind which they crept nearer and nearer the imprisoned garrison, and he kept them at their tasks night and day, supervising every detail of the siege and organizing the labor with such method that not a second of time nor an ounce of strength 20 was wasted.

Finally, on October 14th--just sixteen days after the combined armies had arrived on the scene--the commander in chief determined to hurry matters still further by carrying two of the enemy's outer works by a.s.sault, and 25 Hamilton was a.s.signed to lead the Americans and Colonel de Deuxponts the French. A brilliant charge followed, and Washington and Rochambeau, closely watching the movement, saw the Americans scale one of the redoubts and capture it within ten minutes, while the French soon 30 followed with equal success. From these two commanding positions a perfect storm of shot and sh.e.l.l was then loosed against the British fortifications, but still Cornwallis would not yield.

Indeed, he made an heroic attempt to break through the lines on the following night, and actually succeeded in spiking some of the French cannon before he was driven 5 back; and again on the next night he made a desperate effort to escape by water, only to be foiled by a terrific storm. By this time, however, his defenses were practically battered to the ground and the town behind them was tumbling to pieces beneath the fire of more than fifty guns. 10

In the face of this terrific bombardment further resistance was useless, and at ten o'clock on the morning of October 17, 1781, exactly four years after the surrender of Burgoyne, a red-coated drummer boy mounted on the crumbling ramparts and beside him appeared an officer with a white 15 flag. Instantly the firing ceased, and an American officer approaching, the flag bearer was blindfolded and conducted to Washington. The message he bore was a proposition for surrender and a request that hostilities be suspended for twenty-four hours. But to this Washington 20 would not consent. Two hours was all he would grant for arranging the terms of surrender. To this Cornwallis yielded, but his first propositions were promptly rejected by Washington, and it was not until eleven at night that all the details were finally agreed upon, and Cornwallis, 25 with over eight thousand officers and men, became prisoners of war.

Two days later the British marched from their intrenchments, their bands playing a quaint old English tune, called _The World Turned Upside Down_, and, pa.s.sing between 30 the French and American troops drawn up in line to receive them, laid down their arms. At the head of the victorious columns rode Washington, Hamilton, Knox, Steuben, Lafayette, Rochambeau, Lincoln, and many other officers, but the British commander, being ill, was not present in person, and when his representative, General O'Hara, tendered his superior's sword to Washington, the 5 commander in chief allowed General Lincoln, who had once been Cornwallis's prisoner, to receive it, and that officer, merely taking it in his hand for a moment, instantly returned it.

Meanwhile hors.e.m.e.n were flying in all directions with 10 the joyful tidings, and within a week the whole country was blazing with enthusiasm, while Washington was calmly planning to finish the work to which he had set his hand.

(From Frederick Trevor Hill's _On the Trail of Washington_. Used by permission of the publishers, D. Appleton & Company.)

1. Make a sketch showing the position of the various armies and navies at the time Washington conceived the bold stroke of trapping Cornwallis, and explain from your map how this stroke was achieved.

2. Tell who the following are: De Gra.s.se, Greene, Clinton, Rochambeau, Lafayette, Lincoln, Steuben, Cornwallis, Burgoyne.

3. What might have disjointed all Washington's plans? Discuss.

Where may the wearied eye repose, When gazing on the great, Where neither guilty glory glows Nor despicable state?

Yes, one--the first--the last--the best-- 5 The Cincinnatus of the West, Whom envy dared not hate Bequeathed the name of Washington, To make men blush there was but one!

--_George Gordon Byron._

JOHN JAMES AUDUBON

BY W. F. MARKWICK AND W. A. SMITH

Our birds and our trees are often honored together on a Bird and Arbor Day. The names of many naturalists might be selected, whose biographies could fittingly be read on such an occasion; but none could be more appropriately chosen than that of John James Audubon, the American pioneer among the scientist lovers of both birds and trees.

In 1828 a wonderful book, _The Birds of America_, by John James Audubon, was issued. It is a good ill.u.s.tration of what has been accomplished by beginning in one's youth to use the powers of observation. Audubon loved and studied birds. Even in his infancy, lying under the orange 5 trees on his father's plantation in Louisiana, he listened to the mocking-bird's song, watching and observing every motion as it flitted from bough to bough. When he was older he began to sketch every bird that he saw, and soon showed so much talent that he was taken to France to be 10 educated.

He entered cheerfully and earnestly upon his studies, and more than a year was devoted to mathematics; but whenever it was possible he rambled about the country, using his eyes and fingers, collecting more specimens, and 15 sketching with such a.s.siduity that when he left France, only seventeen years old, he had finished two hundred drawings of French birds. At this period he tells us that "it was not the desire of fame which prompted to this devotion; it was simply the enjoyment of nature." 20

A story is told of his lying on his back in the woods with some moss for his pillow and looking through a telescopic microscope day after day, to watch a pair of little birds while they made their nest. Their peculiar gray plumage harmonized with the color of the bark of the tree, so that it 5 was impossible to see the birds except by the most careful observation. After three weeks of such patient labor, he felt that he had been amply rewarded for the toil and sacrifice by the results he had obtained.

His power of observation gave him great happiness, from 10 the time he rambled as a boy in the country in search of treasures of natural history, till, in his old age, he rose with the sun and went straightway to the woods near his home, enjoying still the beauties and wonders of nature. His strength of purpose and unwearied energy, combined with 15 his pure enthusiasm, made him successful in his work as a naturalist; but it was all dependent on the habit formed in his boyhood--this habit of close and careful observation; and he not only had this habit of using his eyes but he looked at and studied things worth seeing, worth 20 remembering.

This brief sketch of Audubon's boyhood shows the predominant traits of his character--his power of observation, the training of the eye and hand--that made him in manhood "the most distinguished of American ornithologists," 25 with so much scientific ardor and perseverance that no expedition seemed dangerous or solitude inaccessible when he was engaged in his favorite study.

He has left behind him, as the result of his labors, his great book, _The Birds of America_, in ten volumes, and 30 ill.u.s.trated with four hundred and forty-eight colored plates of over one thousand species of birds, all drawn by his own hand, and each bird represented in its natural size; also a _Biography of American Birds_, in five large volumes, in which he describes their habits and customs. He was a.s.sociated with Dr. Bachman, of Philadelphia, in the preparation of a work on _The Quadrupeds of America_, in six 5 large volumes, the drawings for which were made by his two sons; and later on he published his _Biography of American Quadrupeds_, a work similar to the _Biography of American Birds_. He died at what is known as Audubon Park, on the Hudson, now within the limits of New York city, in 10 1851, at the age of seventy.

--_The True Citizen._

1. Give a brief summation of Audubon's life. What does his name stand for?

2. How many birds can you identify by sight? By song? What winter birds do you know? What is the first migrant bird you see in the spring? Name some birds that stay with us the year round.

3. If you are interested in birds you will enjoy looking through Chapman's _Bird-Life_; Burroughs'

_Wake-Robin_; Gilmore's _Birds Through the Year_; Blanchan's _Bird Neighbors_; Miller's _The First Book of Birds_. You should make a list of these in your notebook for summer reading.

4. In this connection make up a list of five poems about birds; five about flowers; five about trees.

For good reading on trees, see Dorrance's _Story of the Forest_.

MEMORIAL DAY, 1917

BY WOODROW WILSON

Spoken at Arlington to the veterans of the Federal and Confederate armies. There were present men in khaki soon to carry the spirit of America to the battlefields of France.

Any Memorial Day of this sort is, of course, a day touched with sorrowful memory, and yet I for one do not see how we can have any thought of pity for the men whose memory we honor to-day. I do not pity them. I envy them, rather, because theirs is a great work for liberty 5 accomplished and we are in the midst of a work unfinished, testing our strength where their strength already has been tested. There is a touch of sorrow, but there is a touch of rea.s.surance also in a day like this, because we know how the men of America have responded to the call of the 10 cause of liberty, and it fills our minds with a perfect a.s.surance that that response will come again in equal measure, with equal majesty, and with a result which will hold the attention of all mankind.

When you reflect upon it, these men who died to preserve 15 the Union died to preserve the instrument which we are now using to serve the world--a free nation espousing the cause of human liberty. In one sense that great struggle into which we have now entered is an American struggle, because it is in defense of American honor and 20 American rights, but it is something even greater than that; it is a world struggle. It is a struggle of men who love liberty everywhere and in this cause America will show herself greater than ever because she will rise to a greater thing.

We have said in the beginning that we planned this great government that men who wish freedom might have a place of refuge and a place where their hope could be 5 realized, and now, having established such a government, having preserved such a government, having vindicated the power of such a government, we are saying to all mankind, "We did not set this government up in order that we might have a selfish and separate liberty, for we are 10 now ready to come to your a.s.sistance and fight out upon the fields of the world the cause of human liberty." In this thing America attains her full dignity and the full fruition of her great purpose.

1. During the World War, President Woodrow Wilson (1856- ) delivered several notable speeches. In fact, his ability to phrase a thought neatly, caused Europe to look upon him as the spokesman of the Allied cause. This extract from his speech in the cemetery at Arlington, Va., is a good example of his finished literary style. Compare it with Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. How are the two alike? How different?

2. How long before the delivery of this speech did the United States declare war against Germany? What references to this war are in the speech?

3. The cemetery at Arlington is a national burying ground of the fallen heroes of the Civil War. Read the line or lines that refer to them.

_ADVENTURE_

_Life is a series of experiences. A few of these we call adventures because they are out of the ordinary. If, however, one is keen and alert, every experience is a fresh adventure. And excitement galore can be had by reading about the doings of other people. It is no longer necessary to hunt lions or to be adrift on an ice sheet to get the thrill of those who have experienced these things.