Once Upon a Time in ConnecticutNewton, Caroline Clifford
History
Once Upon a Time in Connecticut
Newton, Caroline Clifford
Connecticut -- History
3. Lodge, Henry Cabot. "Address at the Unveiling of the Statue
of the Count de Rochambeau," in _A Fighting Frigate and
other Essays./i> D. Appleton & Co. New York, 1902.
4. Chastellux, Marquis de. _Travels in North America._
London.
NATHAN HALE
"To drum-beat and heart-beat
A soldier marches by;
There is color in his cheek,
There is courage in his eye,
Yet to drum-beat and heart-beat
In a moment he must die."
The story of Nathan Hale is the story of a short life and a brave
death. Connecticut has written his name on her Roll of Honor--the
name of a man who was executed as a spy in the War of the
Revolution. He was born in Coventry, Tolland County, on the 6th
of June, 1755. His father, Deacon Richard Hale, who, as well as
his mother, Elizabeth Strong, was descended from the earliest
settlers of Massachusetts, had moved to Coventry, Connecticut,
and had bought a large farm there. The children were brought up
strictly, as they were in all New England families in those days,
and no doubt there was plenty of hard work for them on the farm,
but, as there were ten or twelve of them, we may be sure there
was plenty of play, too.
It is said that Nathan was not a strong child at first, but grew
vigorous with outdoor life; that "he was fond of running,
leaping, wrestling, firing at a mark, throwing, lifting, playing
ball," and used to tell the girls of Coventry he could do
anything but spin. Stories told of him say that when he was older
he could "put a hand on a fence as high as his head and clear it
easily at a bound"; and that the marks of "a leap which he made
upon the Green in New Haven were long preserved and pointed out."
One of his comrades in the army wrote of him, "His bodily agility
was remarkable. I have seen him follow a football and kick it
over the tops of the trees in the Bowery at New York (an
exercise which he was fond of)."
But he was fond of study, as well as of play, and he must have
done well at the Coventry School, for his parents determined to
send him to college. He was fitted for Yale by the minister in
Coventry, as there were then no preparatory schools such as we
have now. When he was fourteen he entered Yale College at New
Haven with his brother Enoch, who was a year and a half older
than he. They were known in college as Hale Primus and Hale
Secundus.
At Yale Nathan studied well and took a good stand. He became,
too, one of the most popular men in his class. He made many
friends, and their letters to him show us how much they loved and
admired him. At one time he was president, or "chancellor" as it
was called, of the Linonia Debating Society; at another he was
its secretary, or "scribe," and the minutes which he kept then
can be seen now, in his own handwriting, in the Yale Library.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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