It spread over the bays that receive the Saco and the Penobscot. Its loud reveille broke the rest of the trappers of New Hampshire, and, ringing like bugle-notes from peak to peak, overleapt the Green Mountains, swept onward to Montreal, and descended the ocean river, till the responses were echoed from the cliffs of Quebec. The hills along the Hudson told to one another the tale. As the summons hurried to the south, it was one day at New York; in one more at Philadelphia; the next it lighted a watchfire at Baltimore; thence it waked an answer at Annapolis. Crossing the Potomac near Mount Vernon, it was sent forward without a halt to Williamsburg. It traversed the Dismal Swamp to Nansemond, along the route of the first emigrants to North Carolina. It moved onwards and still onwards, through boundless groves of evergreen, to New-Berne and to Wilmington. “For God’s sake, forward it by night and by day,” wrote Cornelius Harnett, by the express which sped for Brunswick. Patriots of South Carolina caught up its tones at the border and despatched it to Charleston, and through pines and palmettos and moss-clad live-oaks, farther to the south, till it resounded among the New England settlements beyond Savannah. The Blue Ridge took up the voice, and made it heard from one end to the other of the valley of Virginia. The Alleghanies, as they listened, opened their barriers, that the “loud call” might pass through to the hardy riflemen on the Holston, the Watauga, and the French Broad. Ever renewing its strength, powerful enough even to create a commonwealth, it breathed its inspiring word to the first settlers of Kentucky; so that hunters who made their halt in the matchless valley of the Elkhorn commemorated the 19th day of April, 1775, by naming their encampment _Lexington_. With one impulse the colonies sprung to arms; with one spirit they pledged themselves to each other “to be ready for the extreme event.” With one heart the continent cried, “Liberty or Death!” THE VOLUNTEER BY ELBRIDGE JEFFERSON CUTLER “At dawn,” he said, “I bid them all farewell, To go where bugles call and rifles gleam.” And with the restless thought asleep he fell, And glided into dream. A great hot plain from sea to mountain spread,— Through it a level river slowly drawn; He moved with a vast crowd, and at its head Streamed banners like the dawn. There came a blinding flash, a deafening roar, And dissonant cries of triumph and dismay; Blood trickled down the river’s reedy shore, And with the dead he lay. The morn broke in upon his solemn dreams, And still with steady pulse and deepening eye, “Where bugles call,” he said, “and rifles gleam, I follow, though I die!” Wise youth! By few is glory’s wreath attained; But death, or late or soon, awaiteth all, To fight in Freedom’s cause is something gained,— And nothing lost to fall. TICONDEROGA (May 10, 1775.)