Lucretia Peabody Hale, a well-known writer in her day, whose delightful
and amusing "Peterkin Papers" are still read and remembered, was a
granddaughter of the Rev. Enoch Hale.
Edward Everett Hale, a man beloved by every one who knew him, was the
son of "a great journalist," Nathan, grandson of Enoch, and therefore
grandnephew of Captain Nathan Hale. He, too, had a son Nathan who died
in his early manhood. Edward Everett Hale was one of the most commanding
and admired of men, with rare endowments as clergyman, author, editor,
and patriot.
Those interested in the study of his granduncle, Nathan, owe to him the
preservation of many records of the Hale family, and an arrangement of
the genealogy of the Hale family, made while he was a Unitarian minister
in Worcester, Massachusetts, and kindly lent to the Hon. I. W. Stuart,
one of Hale's early biographers.
It will be long before some of Edward Everett Hale's vital words are
forgotten; longer still before his marvelous story, "The Man Without a
Country," shall cease to thrill its readers.
The impassioned sentences in which he cites its unhappy hero as speaking
to a boy--a midshipman--while under heavy stress, read, "For your
country, boy, and for your flag, never dream a dream but of serving her
as she bids you, though the service carry you through a thousand hells.
No matter what happens to you, no matter who flatters you or who abuses
you, never look at another flag, never let a night pass but you pray God
to bless that flag. Remember, boy, that behind all these men you have to
do with, behind officers, and government, and people even, there is the
Country Herself, your Country, and that you belong to Her as you belong
to your own mother."
No one justly comprehending the bed rock of Edward Everett Hale's
boundless patriotism can doubt that if the same call of duty had come
to him that came in bygone days to his relative, young Nathan Hale, he
would have done exactly as Nathan Hale did. That call did not come, but
to the end of his days Edward Everett Hale lived for his country as
nobly as Nathan Hale died for it.
CHAPTER X
ANCESTORS AND DESCENDANTS OF NATHAN HALE'S PARENTS
Robert Hale arrived in Massachusetts in 1632. He was one of those sent
from the first church in Boston to form the first church in Charlestown
in 1632, and was a deacon of this church. He was a blacksmith by trade.
He also had a gift for practical mathematics, being regularly employed
by the General Court of Massachusetts as a surveyor of new plantations.
His son John, of whom mention has been made in connection with the
witchcraft delusion, was a graduate of Harvard in 1657. Samuel, the
fourth son of John, was the father of Richard, father of Nathan Hale.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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