"When a certain great king, whose initial is G, Shall force stamps upon paper and folks to drink tea; When these folks burn his tea and stampt paper like stubble, You may guess that this king is then coming to trouble." THE ESSAYISTS The pen helped to prepare the way for the sword and to arouse and prolong the enthusiasm of those who had taken arms. Before the battle of Lexington (1775), writers were busy on both sides of the dispute, for no great movement begins without opposition. Many colonists did not favor resistance to England. Even at the time of the first battle, comparatively few wished absolute separation from the mother country. THOMAS PAINE (1737-1809) was an Englishman who came to America in 1774 and speedily made himself master of colonial thought and feeling. Early in 1776 he published a pamphlet entitled _Common Sense,_ which advocated complete political independence of England. The sledge hammer blows which he struck hastened the _Declaration of Independence._ Note the energy, the directness, and the employment of the concrete method in the following:-- [Illustration: THOMAS PAINE] "But Britain is the parent country, say some. Then the more shame upon her conduct. Even brutes do not devour their young, nor savages make war upon their families; wherefore, the assertion, if true, turns to her reproach.... This new world hath been the asylum for the persecuted lovers of civil and religious liberty from _every part_ of Europe. Hither have they fled, not from the tender embraces of the mother, but from the cruelty of the monster; and it is so far true of England, that the same tyranny which drove the first emigrants from home, pursues their descendants still." In the latter part of 1776 Washington wrote, "If every nerve is not strained to recruit the new army with all possible expedition, I think the game is pretty nearly up." In those gloomy days, sharing the privations of the army, Thomas Paine wrote the first number of an irregularly issued periodical, known as the _Crisis_, beginning:-- "These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman."