Page:Seventy-six, or, Love and battle (IA seventysixlove00nealrich).pdf/8

 worn, and bruised and broken, and scarred all over with the deep cabala of premature old age. None but an eye-witness can tell, as it ought to be told, the story of individual suffering, protracted for such a time, the tale of individual heroism, continued year after year, under privation, cruelty, insult, and toil, beyond all that the men of Rome or Macedon, under Alexander himself, would have borne, in the spring-tide of their heart's valour.

Yes, though I would tell the tale before I die—old as I am, frail as the tenure is by which I hold to the earth, I must take my own time for it, and tell that which I do tell with the plainness and honesty of my nature, so that you may depend upon it. You know that I will tell you nothing which I do not know to be true. I need not add, therefore, that, where there is a disagreement between my story, and that which you will find in the blundering, tedious compilations, which are called the Histories of our Revolution, you will do well to rely upon mine.

Let this be copied, in a fair hand, by Frederick, and during the next week I will forward you two or three sheets more. Make no alteration in it—no corrections. If there be any part illegible, leave a blank, till I have an opportunity of supplying it. I would have this a family relic—the egitimate production of your father—an uneducated, plain soldier, and of him alone. It will then grow every year in your veneration, gain every year upon your heart, in solemnity and interest. Nay, let this intimation take a higher authority. I know the sacredness of ancient things. I command you, therefore, that you lay not your hand upon one letter of what I write. Men do not talk now as they used to—you see none of the old-fashioned kingly-looking people in this generation—nothing of their high carriage and attitude—hear nothing of their powerful voices, and legal tread—their thought, the currency of their heart is base and degenerate; it wears no longer the stamp of sovereignty—is no longer the coinage of God's kingdom; but the paltry counterfeit thereof base and showy. No! trust them not. Hold what there is left to you of other days, as the regalia of giants; to be visited only by torchlight, with downcast eyes and folded arms. Ye are a fettered people fettered too by manacles, that would have fallen from the limbs of your fathers like rain dropped from them, in the indignant heat of their mighty hearts, like the leaden entrenchments of a furnace.

My children—it has been my nature, from my childhood, to speak and write for myself. There are few men upon this earth, in whom it would not be presumption to alter what I have written. And you, my children, are not of their number. In you, it would be wicked and foolish. It would lead to a perpetual discus&ion, in your family, about the genuineness of the whole, and, in time, destroy all your reverence for me. No let there be no interpolation. My blessing shall not abide upon him that dares to add, alter, or leave out, one ot or tittle of the whole. No—let it go down, with your blood, the patent of your nobility, to the elder son, for ever and ever; and when you are able, multiply the copies among all that are descended from me, as the last legacy of one, that it would be an honour to them, whatever they may become, to be the posterity of.

My style may often, offend you. I do not doubt that it will. I hope that it will. It will be remembered the better. It will be the style of a soldier, plain and direct, where facts are to be narrated of a man, roused and inflamed, when the nature of man is outraged of a father, a husband, a lover, and a child, as the tale is of one or of the other.

You have all had a better education than your father. You have, most of you, a pleasant and graceful way of expressing yourselves on paper—and there is one among you, you know which I mean, the operations of whose mind are as vivid, and instantaneous, and beautiful, as flashes of coloured light—but there is not one among you, not one, that has yet learnt to talk on paper. Learn that—learn it speedily ; there is no time to be lost.

Farewell, my children, farewell: till the next mail. I shall expect you, a week, at least, before Christmas.

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After reflecting a good deal upon the subject, dear children, I have come to the conclusion, that, if I interweave with the history, which I have promised to you, some account of myself and Archibald, of whom you have heard me relate so many things that made your nerves shiver, as with electricity, when you were mere boys, it will do much toward perpetuating the history of our family, and keeping your attention alive to the order of events.

And that, at the end of another generation, my posterity may not have to inquire, who and what were their ancestors, I will begin my narrative with a rapid sketch of our family, so far as there are now any traces of them left. I find a tradition among us that we are of Scotch extraction; and, by looking into the records of our oldest colony, as Plymouth, you will find a constant reference to the name of Oadley, as to one of influence and authority. My grandfather, I know, was born in a part of New England, since called the New Hampshire Grants, and, yet more recently, composing a part of the newly-made state of Vermont:—and I have heard my father relate several anecdotes of his warlike and adventurous character. It was he that headed the party against King Philip, as he was called, the Indian of Mount Hope, the season before his death; and he was the very man that grappled with him, in the midst of his young men, who had decoyed the party into an ambush; thereby, as you will remember,holding Philip as a hostage, even in the centre of his wigwam, till he was compelled to forego the whole profit of his adventure; and he it was who threw up his commission, before the Plymouth fathers, and broke his sword, and swore by the Everlasting God that he would never another, after the shameful treachery that had been practised upon that wary but high-hearted Indian, at the time of his assassination. Nor did he, till his dying day, I