Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7Sylvester, Charles Herbert
General
Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7
Sylvester, Charles Herbert
Children's literature; Literature -- Collections
airs the while, to excite the slow and cheer the dying combatants. I was
myself excited somewhat even as if they had been men. The more you think
of it, the less the difference. And certainly there is not the fight
recorded in Concord history, at least, if in the history of America,
that will bear a moment's comparison with this, whether for the numbers
engaged in it, or for the patriotism and heroism displayed. For numbers
and for carnage it was an Austerlitz or Dresden. Concord Fight! Two
killed on the patriots' side, and Luther Blanchard wounded! Why, here
every ant was a Butterick--"Fire! for God's sake, fire!"--and thousands
shared the fate of Davis and Hosmer. There was not one hireling there. I
have no doubt that it was a principle they fought for, as much as our
ancestors, and not to avoid a three-penny tax on their tea; and the
results of this battle will be as important and memorable to those whom
it concerns as those of the battle of Bunker Hill, at least.
I took up the chip on which the three I have particularly described were
struggling, carried it into my house, and placed it under a tumbler on
my window sill, in order to see the issue. Holding a microscope to the
first-mentioned red ant, I saw that, though he was assiduously gnawing
at the near fore-leg of his enemy, having severed his remaining feeler,
his own breast was all torn away, exposing what vitals he had there to
the jaws of the black warrior, whose breastplate was apparently too
thick for him to pierce; and the dark carbuncles of the sufferer's eyes
shone with ferocity such as war only could excite. They struggled half
an hour longer under the tumbler, and when I looked again the black
soldier had severed the heads of his foes from their bodies, and still
living heads were hanging on either side of him like ghastly trophies
at his saddle-bow, still apparently as firmly fastened as ever, and he
was endeavoring with feeble struggles, being without feelers and with
only the remnant of a leg, and I know not how many other wounds, to
divest himself of them; which at length, after half an hour more, he
accomplished. I raised the glass, and he went off over the window sill
in that crippled state. Whether he finally survived that combat, and
spent the remainder of his days in some Hotel des Invalides, I do not
know; but I thought that his industry would not be worth much
thereafter. I never learned which party was victorious, nor the cause of
the war; but I felt for the rest of that day as if I had had my feelings
excited and harrowed by witnessing the struggle, the ferocity and
carnage, of a human battle before my door.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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