Page:Sketch of Connecticut, Forty Years Since.djvu/238

 tense cold of that Christmas night. Seated upon his noble horse, and attended by General Greene, he superintended the hazardous embarkation, with the serenity of a superiour being. In retracing this group, the athletic form and open countenance of his black servant Bill always recurs to my memory, with his upturned eye fixed affectionately upon his master, as if he were the arbiter of his fate. On a slippery and steep eminence at some distance, the intrepid Knox directed the passage of the artillery. His steed seemed to tread in air, and he displayed the same firmness, with which he continued to stand, as one of the pillars of the temple of Liberty, until the storm which rocked her foundations had past. The soldiers forced the horses, with their baggage, down the slippery banks, and the slight boats, in which they encountered the masses of ice borne down by the river, seemed emblematical of the struggles of an infant nation with one, whose armour, and whose tone threatened destruction."

Could Colonel have anticipated the events of forty years, he might have seen the magnificent pencil of Sully forcibly illustrating his own description of the memorable "Passage of the Delaware."

Madam L, always moved by the praises of Washington, replied—

"Such an union of goodness with greatness, of deliberative wisdom with energy of execution, of attention to the most minute concerns amid the transaction of the greatest, rank our Washington, not only among the first of heroes, but the best of men."