Never stop, stay,
or delay, but make ready!--present!-- fire!--and, again and again,
make ready!--present!--fire!--till every round of ammunition is
gone.'"
Here the dry, rusty, unmodulated tone, in which the old king's arm
had, up to this time, spoken, suddenly changed; and it seemed as if
a succession of shots had been let off. Then, bringing himself down
to the floor with a DUNT off of the little tea chest full of old
shoes, on which he had stood leaning against the brick chimney,
exactly as he used to do grounding arms seventy years ago, he
quietly dropped back into the drowsy tone of narrative, and
proceeded:--
"Yes--never flag nor hang back. The greater the danger, the more do
you press up to the mark. So we did at Trenton in the Jerseys, on
that most glorious day of my life of which I am now about to tell
you.
I must tell you that I had the honor of fighting under General
Washington; for I had been marched down to Trenton with a stout-
hearted teamster, named Judah Loring, from Braintree, Massachusetts,
who, after our battle at Bunker Hill, in that State, picked me up
from the bottom of the works, where, for want of pickaxes, I had
been, as I told you, serving as a trenching, tool, and made himself
my better-half and commander-in-chief. Excuse a stately phrase; but,
after the battle of Bunker Hill, I never could screw up my muzzle to
call any man master or owner again.
We found only a few thousand men and muskets there, principally from
Virginia, Pennsylvania, and the Jerseys, with a few companies of New
Englanders; and a steadier, sturdier set of men than these last
never breathed.
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