Under that cloud, by Washington's side, was silently at work the force that lifted it Marching by day, listening to the consultations of Washington and his generals, Paine wrote by the camp fires; the winter storms, the Delaware's waves, were mingled with his ink; the half-naked soldiers in their troubled sleep dreaming of their distant homes, the skulking deserter creeping off in the dusk, the pallid face of the heavy-hearted commander, made the awful shadows beneath which was written that leaflet which went to the Philadelphia printer along with Washington's last foreboding letters to his relatives in Virginia. It was printed on December 19th,* and many copies reached the camp above Trenton Falls on the eve of that almost desperate attack on which Washington had resolved. On the 23d December he wrote to Colonel Joseph Reed: * The pamphlet was dated December 23rd, but it had appeared on the 19th in the Pennsylvania Journal, the pen none have achieved such vast results as Paine's "Common Sense" and his first _Crisis_, Before the battle of Trenton the half- clad, dis-heartened soldiers of Washington were called together in groups to listen to that thrilling exhortation. "Christmas-day, at night, one hour before day, is the time fixed upon for our attempt on Trenton. For Heaven's sake keep this to yourself, as the discovery of it may prove fatal to us; our numbers, sorry I am to say, being less than I had any conception of; but necessity, dire necessity will, nay must, justify any attempt." America has known some utterances of the lips equivalent to decisive victories in the field,--as some of Patrick Henry's, and the address of President Lincoln at Gettysburg. The opening words alone were a victory. "These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict the more glorious the triumph: what we obtain too cheap we esteem too lightly; 't is dearness only that gives everything its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as Freedom should not be highly rated."