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- CHAPTER III.
ISRAEL GOES TO THE WARS; AND REACHING BUNKER HILL IN TIME TO BE OF
SERVICE THERE, SOON AFTER IS FORCED TO EXTEND HIS TRAVELS ACROSS THE
SEA INTO THE ENEMY’S LAND.
Left to idle lamentations, Israel might now have planted deep furrows
in his brow. But stifling his pain, he chose rather to plough, than be
ploughed. Farming weans man from his sorrows. That tranquil pursuit
tolerates nothing but tranquil meditations. There, too, in mother
earth, you may plant and reap; not, as in other things, plant and see
the planting torn up by the roots. But if wandering in the wilderness,
and wandering upon the waters, if felling trees, and hunting, and
shipwreck, and fighting with whales, and all his other strange
adventures, had not as yet cured poor Israel of his now hopeless
passion, events were at hand for ever to drown it.
It was the year 1774. The difficulties long pending between the
colonies and England were arriving at their crisis. Hostilities were
certain. The Americans were preparing themselves. Companies were formed
in most of the New England towns, whose members, receiving the name of
minute-men, stood ready to march anywhere at a minute’s warning.
Israel, for the last eight months, sojourning as a laborer on a farm in
Windsor, enrolled himself in the regiment of Colonel John Patterson of
Lenox, afterwards General Patterson.
The battle of Lexington was fought on the 18th of April, 1775; news of
it arrived in the county of Berkshire on the 20th about noon. The next
morning at sunrise, Israel swung his knapsack, shouldered his musket,
and, with Patterson’s regiment, was on the march, quickstep, towards
Boston.
Like Putnam, Israel received the stirring tidings at the plough. But
although not less willing than Putnam to fly to battle at an instant’s
notice, yet—only half an acre of the field remaining to be finished—he
whipped up his team and finished it. Before hastening to one duty, he
would not leave a prior one undone; and ere helping to whip the
British, for a little practice’ sake, he applied the gad to his oxen.
From the field of the farmer, he rushed to that of the soldier,
mingling his blood with his sweat. While we revel in broadcloth, let us
not forget what we owe to linsey-woolsey.
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