principle unto death." "By perseverance and fortitude we have the prospect of a glorious issue; by cowardice and submission, the sad choice of a variety of evils--a ravaged country, a depopulated city, habitations without safety, and slavery without hope; our homes turned into barracks and bawdy houses for Hessians, and a future race to provide for, whose fathers we shall doubt of. Look on this picture and weep over it! and if there yet remains one thoughtless wretch who believes it not, let him suffer it unlamented." This little pamphlet was dated Dec. 23, 1776. It was read at the head of the regiments which made up the small remnant of Washington's army. On Christmas night, Washington recrosses the Delaware, and strikes the Hessians at Trenton the next morning. His horse is shot under him, but he wins his _first battle_ and takes nearly a thousand prisoners, eight cannon, and twelve hundred small arms. A few days afterward, Washington struck the British at Princeton, who lost in killed and wounded two hundred, and of prisoners the Americans took two hundred and thirty. Many of Washington's best soldiers being now quite barefoot and badly clad, and the winter weather severe, he closed the first campaign made glorious for freedom by the pen of that man who had undertaken the "_business of a world_." But in the fall and winter before this his pen was not idle. The new Constitution of Pennsylvania had distracted the State, and Paine tries to bring order out of chaos. He is not unmindful of the Quakers, who will not obey the teachings of their religion and remain neutral, and it is a severe chastisement he gives them, for he talks to them as one having authority.