Page:Great Men and Famous Women Volume 6.djvu/22

 L'lli WORKMEN AND HEROES " Bring me, I beg of you," he is reported to have said, " the epaulettes arid sword- knots which Washington gave me. Let me die in my old American uniform, the uniform in which I fought my battles ! " And once, it is declared, he gave vent to these most significant and terrible words : " God forgive me for ever put- ting on any other ! " That country which he forswore in the hour of its direst need can surely afford to forgive Benedict Arnold as well. Grown the greatest republic of which history keeps any record, America need not find it difficult both to forget the wretched frailties of this, her grossly misguided son, and at the same time to remember what services he performed for her while as yet his bale- ful qualities had not swept beyond all bounds of restraint. Mc, 9 OsT- NATHAN HALE* By Rev. Edward Everett Hale (i 755-i 776)

Nathan Hale, a martyr soldier of the American Revolution, was born in Coventry, Conn., on June 6, 1755. When but little more than twenty-one years old he was hanged, by order of General William Howe, as a spy, in the city of New York, on September 22, 1776. At the great centennial celebration of the Revolution, and the part which the State of Connecticut bore in it, an immense assembly of the people of Connecticut, on the heights of Gro- ton, took measures for the erection of a statue in Hale's honor. Their wish has been carried out by their agents in the govern- ment of the State. A bronze statue of Hale is in the State Capitol. Another bronze statue of him has been erected in the front of the Wadsworth Athenaeum in Hartford. Another is in the city of New York. Nathan Hale's father was Richard Hale, who had emigrated to Coventry, from Newbury, Mass.,' in 1746, and had married Elizabeth, the daughter of Joseph Strong. By her he had twelve children, of whom Nathan was the sixth. Richard Hale was a prosperous and successful farmer. He sent to Yale College at one time his two sons, Enoch and Nathan, who had been born within two years of each other. This college was then under the direction of Dr. Dagrt gett. Both the young men enjoyed study, and Nathan Hale, at the exercises of " Copyright, 1894, by Selmar Hess.