University of Virginia Library

DIALOGUE I.

Scene. The ground before the fort. Baggage wagons.
Cannon dismounted. Confused sounds within.
A soldier is seen leaning on his rifle.

(Another soldier enters.)

2nd Sol.

It's morning! Look in the east there. What
are we waiting for?

1st Sol.

Eh! The devil knows best, I reckon, Sir.

2nd Sol.

Hillo, John! What's the matter there?
Here's day-break upon us! What are we waiting for?

(Another soldier enters.)

3d Sol.

To build a bridge—that is all.

2nd Sol.

A bridge?

3d Sol.

We shall be off by to-morrow night, no doubt of
it,—if we don't chance to get cooked and eaten before
that time,—some little risk of that.

2nd Sol.

But what's the matter below there, I say?
The bridge? what ails it?

3d Sol.

Just as that last wagon was going over, down
comes the bridge, Sirs, or a good piece of it at least.—
What else could it do?—timbers half sawn away!

2nd Sol.

Some of that young jackanape's work! Aid-de-camp!
I'd aid him. He must be ordering and fidgetting,
and fuming.—Could not wait till we were over.

1st Sol.

All of a piece, boys!

3d Sol.

Humph. I wish it had been,—the bridge, I
mean.

1st Sol.

But, I say, don't you see how every thing,
little and great, goes one way, and that, against us?
Chance has no currents like this! It's a bad side that
Providence frowns on. I think when Heaven deserts a
cause, it's time for us poor mortals to begin to think about
it.

3d Sol.

Now, if you are going to do so mean a thing
as that, don't talk about Heaven—prythee don't.

[They pass on.

(Two other soldiers enter.)

4th Sol.

singing.)

(Breaking off abruptly.)
I do not like the looks of it,
Will.

5th Sol.

Of what?

4th Sol.

Of the morning that begins to glimmer in the
east there.

5th Sol.

No? Why, I was thinking just now I never
saw a handsomer summer's dawning. That first faint
light on the woods and meadows, there is nothing I like
better. See, it has reached the river now.

4th Sol.

But the mornings we saw two years ago
looked on us with another sort of eye than this,—it is not
the glimmer of the long, pleasant harvest day that we see
there.

5th Sol.

We have looked on mornings that promised
better, I'll own. I would rather be letting down the bars
in the old meadow just now, or hawing with my team
down the brake; with the children by my side to pick
the ripe blackberries for our morning meal, than standing

here in these rags with a gun on my shoulder. Let
well alone.—We could not though.

4th Sol.

(Handing him a glass.)
See, they are beginning
to form again. It looks for all the world like a funeral
train.

5th Sol.

What was the Stamp Act to us, or all the
acts beyond the sea that ever were acted, so long as
they left us our golden fields, our Sabbath days, the quiet
of the summer evening door, and the merry winter
hearth. The Stamp Act? It would have been cheaper
for us to have written our bills on gold-leaf, and for
tea, to have drunk melted jewels, like the queen I read
of once; cheaper and better, a thousand times, than the
bloody cost we are paying now.

4th Sol.

It was not the money, Will,—it was not the
money, you know. The wrong it was. We could not
be trampled on in that way,—it was not in us—we could
not.

5th Sol.

Ay, ay. A fine thing to get mad about was
that when we sat in the door of a moonlight evening and
the day's toils were done. It was easy talking then.
Trampled on! I will tell you when I was nearest being
trampled on, Andros,—when I lay on the ground below
there last winter,—on the frozen ground, with the blood
running out of my side like a river, and a great high
heeled German walking over my shoulder as if I had
been a hickory log. I can tell you, Sir, that other was a

moon-shiny sort of a trampling to that. I shall bear to be
trampled on in figures the better for it, as long as I live.
Between ourselves now—

4th Sol.

There's no one here.

5th Sol.

There are voices around that corner, though.
Come this way.

[They pass on.

(Another group of Soldiers.)

1st Sol.

Then if nothing else happens, we are off now.
Hillo, Martin! Here we go again—skulking away.
Hey? What do you say now? Hey, M r.Martin, what
do you say now?

2nd Sol.

(Advancing.)
What I said before.

1st Sol.

But where is all this to end, Sir? Tell us
that—tell us that.

3d Sol.

Yes, yes,—tell us that. If you don't see Burgoyne
safe in Albany by Friday night, never trust me,
Sirs.

1st Sol.

A bad business we've made of it.

4th Sol.

Suppose he gets to Albany;—do you think
that would finish the war?

3d Sol.

Well, indeed, I thought that was settled on all
hands, Sir. I believe the General himself makes no secret
of that.

4th Sol.

And what becomes of us all then? We

shall go back to the old times again, I suppose;—weren't
so very bad though, Sam, were they?

1st Sol.

We have seen worse, I'll own.

3d Sol.

And what becomes of our young nation here,
with its congress and its army, and all these presidents,
and gene als, and colonels, and aide-de-camps?—wont it
look like a great baby-house when the hubbub is over,
and the colonies settle quietly down again?

2nd Sol.

Faith, you take it very coolly. Before that
can happen, do you know what must happen to you?

1st Sol.

Nothing worse than this, I reckon.

2nd Sol.

(makes a gesture to denote hanging.)

4th Sol.

What would they hang us though? Do you
think they would really hang us, John?

2nd Sol.

Wait and see.

1st Sol.

Nonsense! nonsense! A few of the ringleaders,
Schuyler, and Hancock, and Washington, and a
few such, they will hang of course,—but for the rest,—
we shall have to take the oath anew, and swallow a few
duties with our sugar and tea, and—

2nd Sol.

You talk as if the matter were all settled
already.

1st Sol.

There is no more doubt of it, than that you
and I stand here this moment. Why, they are flocking
to Skeensborough from all quarters now, and this poor

fragment,—this miserable skeleton of an army, which is
the only earthly obstacle between Burgoyne and Albany,
why, even this is crumbling to pieces as fast as one can
reckon. Two hundred less than we were yesterday at
this hour, and to-morrow—how many are off to-morrow?
Ay, and what are we doing the while? Bowing and
retreating, cap in hand, from post to post, from Crown
Point to Ticonderoga, from Ticonderoga to Fort Edward,
from Fort Edward onward; just showing them
down, as it were, into the heart of the land. Let them
get to Albany—Ah, let them once get to Albany, they'll
need no more of our help then, they'll take care of themselves
then and us too.

2nd Sol.

They'll never get to Albany.

1st Sol.

Hey?

2nd Sol.

They'll never get to Albany.

1st Sol.

What's to hinder them?

2nd Sol.

We,—yes we,—and such as we, cravenhearted
as we are. They'll never get to Albany until we
take them there captives.

3d Sol.

Then they'll wait till next week, I reckon.

1st Sol.

Ha ha ha! Ha ha ha! How many prison
ers shall we have a-piece, John? How many regiments,
I mean? They'll open the windows when we get there,
won't they? I hope the sun will shine that day. How
grandly we shall march down the old hill there, with our

train behind us. I shall have to borrow a coat of one of
them though, they might be ashamed of their captor
else.

3d Sol.

When is this great battle to be, John? This
don't look much like it.

4th Sol.

I think myself, if the General would only give
us a chance to fight—

2nd Sol.

A chance to throw your life away,—he will
never give you. A chance to fight, you will have ere
long,—doubt it not. Our General might clear his blackened
fame, by opposing this force to that,—this day he
might;—he will not do it. The time has not yet come.
But he will spare no pains to strengthen the army, and
prepare it for victory, and the glory he will leave to his
rival. Recruits will be pouring in ere long. General
Burgoyne's proclamation has weakened us,—General
Schuyler will issue one himself to-day.

1st Sol.

Will he? will he? What will he proclaim?
—As to the recruits he gets, I'll eat them all, skin and
bone. What will he proclaim? You see what Burgoyne
offers us. On the one hand, money and clothing,
and protection for ourselves and our families; and on the
other, the cord, and the tomahawk, and the scalping-knife.
Now, what will General Schuyler set down over
against these two columns?—What will he offer us?—
To lend us a gun, maybe,—leave to follow him from one
post to another, barefooted and starving, and for our

pains to be cursed and reviled for cowards from one end
of the land to the other. And what will he threaten?
Ha, we were cowards indeed, if we feared what he could
threaten. What thing in human nature will he speak
to?—say.

2nd Sol.

I will tell you. To that spirit in human nature
which resists the wrong, the fiendish wrong threatened
there. Ay, in the basest nature that power sleeps,
and out of the bosom of Omnipotence there is nothing
stronger. It has wakened here once, and this war is its
fruit. It slumbers now. Let Burgoyne look to it that
he rouse it not himself for us. Let him look to it. For
every outrage of those fiendish legions, thank God.—It
lays a finger on the spring of our only strength. What
will he offer us? I will tell you.—A chance to live, or to
die,—men,—ay, to leave a sample of manhood on the
earth, that shall wring tears from the selfish of unborn
ages, as they feel for once the depths of the slumbering
and godlike nature within them. And Burgoyne,—oh!
a coat and a pair of shoes, he offers, and—how many
pounds?—Are you men?

4th Sol.

What do you say, Sam?—Talks like a minister,
don't he?

1st Sol.

Come, come,—there's the drum, boys. You
don't bamboozle me again! I've heard all that before.

3d Sol.

Nor me.—I don't intend to have my wife and

children tomahawked,—don't think I can stand that, refugee
or not.

2nd Sol.

Here they come.

(Other Soldiers enter.)

5th Sol.

All's ready, all's ready.

6th Sol.

(singing.)

[Exeunt.