Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year Part 7

2. What was the situation when this extract takes up the tale? How many soldiers had Porsena?

3. Imagine yourself in Horatius's place. Read aloud his brave speech in the first and second stanzas.

4. If you were dramatizing this whole situation, what scenes would you have? What would be the climax?

_PIONEER DAYS_

_In these days of the automobile, the swift express train, the telephone, the telegraph, and the airplane, it is hard for us to realize that our country did not always possess the conveniences and comforts we now enjoy. We are too apt to forget the struggles the pioneer fathers of our nation had in their frontier life. To them we owe a debt of grat.i.tude not only for what we have and are, but also for the deeds of heroism they have bequeathed us as a part of our national heritage._

[Ill.u.s.tration: MOLLY PITCHER SALUTES WASHINGTON

(_See following page_)]

THE STORY OF MOLLY PITCHER

BY FRANK R. STOCKTON

The battle of Monmouth, N. J., was fought June 29, 1778. It was the first battle the Americans had with the British after the terrible winter at Valley Forge. It would have been a signal victory for Washington's troops had General Charles Lee obeyed Washington's orders. Notwithstanding Lee's acts, the American troops held their ground till nightfall, when the British quietly retreated.

At the battle of Monmouth, a young Irishwoman, wife of an artilleryman, played a very notable part in the working of the American cannon on that eventful day in June.

Molly was born with the soul of a soldier, and although 5 she did not belong to the army she much preferred going to war to staying at home and attending to domestic affairs.

She was in the habit of following her husband on his various marches, and on the day of the Monmouth battle she was with him on the field. 10

The day was very hot. The rays of the sun came down with such force that many of the soldiers were taken sick and some died; and the constant discharges of musketry and artillery did not make the air any cooler. Molly devoted herself to keeping her husband as comfortable as 15 possible, and she made frequent trips to a spring not far away to bring him water; and on this account he was one of the freshest and coolest artillerymen on the ground.

In fact, there was no man belonging to the battery who was able to manage one of these great guns better than Pitcher. 20 Returning from one of her trips to the spring, Molly had almost reached the place where her husband was stationed when a bullet from the enemy struck the poor man and stretched him dead, so that Molly had no sooner caught sight of her husband than she saw him fall. She 5 ran to the gun, but scarcely had reached it before she heard one of the officers order the cannon to be wheeled back out of the way, saying that there was no one there who could serve it as it had been served.

Now Molly's eyes flashed fire. One might have thought 10 that she would have been prostrated with grief at the loss of her husband, but as we have said, she had within her the soul of a soldier. She had seen her husband, who was the same to her as a comrade, fall, and she was filled with an intense desire to avenge his death. She cried out to 15 the officer not to send the gun away but to let her serve it; and scarcely waiting to hear what he would say, she sprang to the cannon and began to load it and fire it. She had so often attended her husband and even helped him in his work that she knew all about this sort of thing, and her 20 gun was managed well and rapidly.

It might be supposed that it would be a very strange thing to see a woman on the battlefield firing a cannon; but even if the enemy had watched Molly with a spygla.s.s, they would not have noticed anything to excite their surprise. 25 She wore an ordinary skirt, like other women of the time; but over this was an artilleryman's coat and on her head was a c.o.c.ked hat with some jaunty feathers stuck in it, so that she looked almost as much like a man as the rest of the soldiers of the battery. 30

During the rest of the battle Molly bravely served her gun; and if she did as much execution in the ranks of the redcoats as she wanted to do, the loss in the regiments in front of her must have been very great. Of course all the men in the battery knew Molly Pitcher, and they watched her with the greatest interest and admiration. She would not allow anyone to take her place, but kept on loading and 5 firing until the work of the day was done. Then the officers and men crowded about her with congratulations and praise.

The next day General Greene went to Molly--whom he found in very much the condition in which she had left 10 the battlefield, stained with dirt and powder, with her fine feathers gone and her c.o.c.ked hat dilapidated--and conducted her, just as she was, to General Washington.

When the commander in chief heard what she had done, he gave her warm words of praise. He determined to 15 bestow upon her a substantial reward; for anyone who was brave enough and able enough to step in and fill an important place, as Molly had filled her husband's place, certainly deserved a reward. It was not according to the rules of war to give a commission to a woman; but as 20 Molly had acted the part of a man, Washington considered it right to pay her for her services as if she had been a man.

He therefore gave her the commission of a sergeant and recommended that her name be placed on the list of half-pay officers for life. 25

--_Stories of New Jersey._

1. How did Molly come to be on the battlefield?

Describe her as she looked in an artilleryman's garb. Relate briefly her deed of heroism. How was it rewarded?

2. What other heroines of history can you recall?

3. Frank R. Stockton (1834-1902) is a well-known name in American literature. He wrote many books, among which _Rudder Grange_ stands high. His short stories, however, are his best work.

KING PHILIP TO THE WHITE SETTLERS

BY EDWARD EVERETT

For thirty years Ma.s.sasoit was the firm friend of the early settlers in New England. But when his son Philip came to rule over the Indian tribe their former friendship for the whites was broken. In 1675 Philip led his 10,000 warriors against the white settlers. King Philip's War lasted into 1676 when Philip was captured and slain. The following is a supposed speech of defiance that Philip delivered to the colonists.

White man, there is eternal war between thee and me! I quit not the land of my fathers but with my life. In those woods where I bent my youthful bow, I will still hunt the deer. Over yonder waters I will still glide unrestrained in my bark canoe. By those dashing waterfalls 5 I will still lay up my winter's store of food. On these fertile meadows I will still plant my corn. Stranger, the land is mine! I understand not these paper rights. I gave not my consent when, as thou sayest, these broad regions were purchased, for a few baubles, of my fathers. They 10 could sell what was theirs; they could sell no more. How could my fathers sell that which the Great Spirit sent me into the world to live upon? They knew not what they did. The stranger came, a timid suppliant, few and feeble, and asked to lie down on the red man's bearskin, and 15 warm himself at the red man's fire, and have a little piece of land to raise corn for his women and children; and now he is become strong, and mighty, and bold, and spreads out his parchment over the whole, and says, "It is mine!"

Stranger, there is not room for us both. The Great Spirit has not made us to live together. There is poison in the white man's cup; the white man's dog barks at the red man's heels.

If I should leave the land of my fathers, whither shall I 5 fly? Shall I go to the south, and dwell among the graves of the Pequots? Shall I wander to the west?--the fierce Mohawk, the man-eater, is my foe. Shall I fly to the east?--the great water is before me. No, stranger, here I have lived, and here I will die! And if here thou abidest, there 10 is eternal war between thee and me. Thou hast taught me thy arts of destruction. For that alone I thank thee; and now take heed to thy steps; the red man is thy foe.

When thou goest forth by day, my bullet shall whistle by thee; when thou liest down at night, my knife is at thy 15 throat. The noonday sun shall not discover thy enemy, and the darkness of midnight shall not protect thy rest.

Thou shalt plant in terror, and I will reap in blood; thou shalt sow the earth with corn, and I will strew it with ashes; thou shalt go forth with the sickle, and I will follow after 20 with the scalping knife; thou shalt build, and I will burn, till the white man or the Indian shall cease from the land.

Go thy way, for this time, in safety; but remember, stranger, there is eternal war between me and thee.

1. What reasons did Philip give for declaring war?

To what extent were his reasons good?

2. What did he mean by "paper rights"; "a timid suppliant"; "poison in the white man's cup"; "arts of destruction"?

3. Edward Everett (1794-1865) was an American statesman, orator, and scholar. He served as a member of Congress, and afterwards was president of Harvard College. He was the leading orator of his day.

PIONEER LIFE IN OHIO

BY WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS

William Dean Howells (1837-1920) long held a position of leadership among American writers of prose. In his many years of authorship he produced novels, essays, criticism, plays, travel, and biography. For ten years he was editor of the _Atlantic Monthly_; and he was connected at various times with _Harper's Magazine_, _The Nation_, and other journals. His writings excel in the truthfulness of the descriptions.

It would not be easy to say where or when the first log cabin was built, but it is safe to say that it was somewhere in the English colonies of North America, and it is certain that it became the type of the settler's house throughout the whole Middle West. It may be called the 5 American house, the Western house, the Ohio house.

Hardly any other house was built for a hundred years by the men who were clearing the land for the stately mansions of our day. As long as the primeval forests stood, the log cabin remained the woodsman's home; and not fifty years ago 10 I saw log cabins newly built in one of the richest and most prosperous regions of Ohio. They were, to be sure, log cabins of a finer pattern than the first settler reared. They were of logs handsomely shaped with the broadax; the joints between the logs were plastered with mortar; the 15 chimney at the end was of stone; the roof was shingled, the windows were of gla.s.s, and the door was solid and well hung. They were such cabins as were the homes of the well-to-do settlers in all the older parts of the West. But throughout that region there were many log cabins, mostly sunk to the uses of stables and corn cribs, of the kind that the borderers built in the times of the Indian War, from 1750 to 1800. They were framed of the round logs, untouched by the ax except for the notches at the ends where 5 they were fitted into one another; the chimney was of small sticks stuck together with mud, and was as frail as a barn-swallow's nest; the walls were stuffed with moss, plastered with clay; the floor was of rough boards called puncheons, riven from the block with a heavy knife; the 10 roof was of clapboards, split from logs and laid loosely on the rafters and held in place with logs fastened athwart them.

When the first settlers broke the silence of the woods with the stroke of their axes and hewed out a s.p.a.ce for their 15 cabins and their fields, they inclosed their homes with a high stockade of logs, for defense against the Indians; or if they built their cabins outside the wooden walls of their stronghold, they always expected to flee to it at the first alarm and to stand siege within it. The Indians had 20 no cannon, and the logs of the stockade were proof against their rifles; if a breach was made, there was still the blockhouse left, the citadel of every little fort. This was heavily built, and pierced with loopholes for the riflemen within, whose wives ran bullets for them at its mighty hearth, and 25 who kept the savage foe from its sides by firing down upon them through the projecting timbers of its upper story; but in many a fearful siege the Indians set the roof ablaze with arrows wrapped in burning tow, and then the fight became desperate indeed. After the Indian War ended, 30 the stockade was no longer needed, and the settlers had only the wild beasts to contend with, and those constant enemies of the poor in all ages and conditions--hunger and cold.

They deadened the trees around them by girdling them with the ax, and planted the s.p.a.ces between the leafless trunks with corn and beans and pumpkins. These were 5 their necessaries, but they had an occasional luxury in the wild honey from the hollow of a bee tree when the bears had not got at it. In its season, there was an abundance of wild fruit, plums and cherries, haws and grapes, berries and nuts of every kind, and the maples yielded all the 10 sugar they chose to make from them. But it was long before they had, at any time, the profusion which our modern arts enable us to enjoy the whole year round, and in the hard beginnings the orchard and the garden were forgotten for the fields. Their harvests must pay for the 15 acres bought of the government, or from some speculator who had never seen the land; and the settler must be prompt in paying, or else see his home pa.s.s from him after all his toil into the hands of strangers. He worked hard and he fared hard, and if he was safer when peace came, 20 it is doubtful if he were otherwise more fortunate. As the game grew scarcer it was no longer so easy to provide food for his family; the change from venison and wild turkey to the pork which early began to prevail in his diet was hardly a wholesome one. Besides, in cutting down the 25 trees he opened s.p.a.ces to the sun which had been harmless enough in the shadow of the woods, but which now sent up their ague-breeding miasma. Ague was the scourge of the whole region, and it was hard to know whether the pestilence was worse on the rich levels beside the rivers, or 30 on the stony hills where the settlers sometimes built to escape it.

When once the settler was housed against the weather, he had the conditions of a certain rude comfort indoors.

If his cabin was not proof against the wind and rain or snow, its vast fireplace formed the means of heating, while the forest was an inexhaustible store of fuel. At first he dressed 5 in the skins and pelts of the deer and fox and wolf, and his costume could have varied little from that of the red savage about him, for we often read how he mistook Indians for white men at first sight, and how the Indians in their turn mistook white men for their own people. The whole 10 family went barefoot in the summer, but in winter the pioneer wore moccasins of buckskin and buckskin leggins or trousers; his coat was a hunting shirt belted at the waist and fringed where it fell to his knees. It was of homespun, a mixture of wool and flax called linsey-woolsey, 15 and out of this the dresses of his wife and daughters were made. The wool was shorn from the sheep, which were so scarce that they were never killed for their flesh, except by the wolves, which were very fond of mutton but had no use for wool. For a wedding dress a cotton check was 20 thought superb, and it really cost a dollar a yard; silks, satins, laces, were unknown. A man never left his house without his rifle; the gun was a part of his dress, and in his belt he carried a hunting knife and a hatchet; on his head he wore a cap of squirrel skin, often with the plume-like 25 tail dangling from it.