Deacon Hale, it is worth telling as an example of the energy that has characterized his descendants.

One haying season Deacon Hale hired a tall, brawny countryman, of uncommon strength, to help him house his crop. While in the field he took upon himself the task of "packing" the load, the hired man's duty being to pitch it on to the cart. The man began his work too slowly to suit Deacon Hale, who soon called out, "More hay!" This call he repeated three or four times, as cock after cock of hay was still somewhat lazily pitched up to him. Finally his tardy helper, becoming sensible that his easy way of working was being rebuked, set himself to work with a will equal to the Deacon's, and at last pitched the hay up so rapidly that his employer was unable to "pack" it properly upon the cart. Very soon, therefore, to the dismay of both men, the whole load slipped off in one great mass on to the ground, carrying the Deacon along with it!

"What do you want now, Deacon?" shouted the Hercules by his side with a satisfied grin.

"More hay!" instantly replied the discomfited Deacon, nimbly scrambling back to his place on the cart.

Despite this little accident at the beginning of the afternoon, it is safe to state that a generous storage of hay took place before sunset.

But happy as were these college days and home-comings, and rich as were the harvests gleaned in them, the four years in college halls sped swiftly, and in 1773 Enoch Hale and Nathan turned their faces toward the future; the one to a long life and faithful Christian service, the other toward the briefest of mortal days, but to a service whose memory will not end till his college walls shall have crumbled, and the names of all its heroic sons faded from the earth. For even though stones may crumble, influence lives on.

It has already been said that at graduation Nathan Hale stood among the first thirteen in a class of thirty-six. On Commencement Day, September 3, 1773, he took part in a forensic debate on the question, "Whether the Education of Daughters be not, without any just reason, more neglected than that of Sons."

In "Memories of a Hundred Years" Dr. Edward Everett Hale says: "As early as 1772 there appears at Yale College the first question ever debated by the Linonian Society. It was, 'Is it right to enslave the Affricans?' I think, by the way, that this record, bad spelling and all, is made by my great-uncle, Nathan Hale." These debates show how seriously, even in the colonial period, men were thinking of the urgent problems of later days.

In the debate first mentioned, the others taking part in it were Benjamin Tallmadge, Ezra Samson, and William Robinson. Some account of Major Tallmadge's after life is given in later pages. Samson was, for a time, a clergyman, and then became an editor, first in Hudson, New York, and then of the Courant, at Hartford, Connecticut.

William Robinson was a direct descendant of Pastor John Robinson of Leyden. He studied for the ministry and was ordained in 1780 at Southington, Connecticut. In the winter of that year—which was one of the coldest and most severe on record—he walked the whole distance from Windsor to Southington, about thirty miles, on snowshoes, to be installed as pastor, an office he held for forty-one years.

CHAPTER III

A Call to Teach

College days behind them, Nathan, now eighteen years old, and Enoch pressed on toward their future. Here, to some extent, we part with Enoch, catching only occasional glimpses of him in a few straggling letters to his brother. It is probable that, as he intended to enter the ministry, he soon began his theological studies. In 1775 he was licensed to preach. Nathan, however, turned toward teaching as the next step in his career.

In the meantime Nathan's love for Alice Adams had not prospered. An older brother, John, had married Alice Adams's elder sister Sarah, and the mother and sister of Alice thought that she should not wait four or five years for Nathan. Perhaps they decided that two intermarriages in one family were quite enough; anyway, they induced Alice to accept the offer of a prosperous merchant of Coventry, Mr. Elijah Ripley, and a short time before Nathan's graduation her marriage had apparently terminated their personal relations.

Nathan Hale was at this time an unusually handsome young man, almost six feet in height, well proportioned, with broad chest, athletic, as we have seen, and with a handsome, intelligent face, blue eyes, light brown hair of a rich color, and a winning smile. These, added to a musical voice and gracious manners, gave him a personal charm that attracted all who saw him.

As a teacher he combined unusual tact and manly dignity, making his discipline in school as effective as it was reasonable. He also proved to be as skillful in imparting knowledge as he had been in acquiring it, and his success as a teacher was assured from the outset.

His first school was in East Haddam, Connecticut. There was then much wealth and business activity in the town, although, to a man fresh from college and the city, it appeared to be a very quiet place, as one or two of his early letters indicate. Yet there too he did with all his might what his hands found to do, and soon proved that not only his work, but his social qualities, were endearing him to new friends, some of whom remembered him with pleasure during their own long lives; one of them saying of Nathan Hale in her own old age, "Everybody loved him, he was so sprightly, intelligent, and kind," and, she added withal, "and so handsome!" He had many correspondents among classmates and friends. Sometimes he was stimulated to put his thoughts into rhyme by some poetical epistle he received. One such was from Benjamin Tallmadge, then in Wethersfield.

Tallmadge had apologized for his muse and Hale, in pure boyish fun, with a fine disregard of whether he was invoking the muse or mounting Pegasus, replied as follows:

"But here, I think you're wrong, to blame
Your gen'rous muse and call her lame,
For when arriv'd no mark was found
Of weakness, lameness, sprain or wound."

Then, invoking her himself, he describes her as if she were indeed the wingèd steed,

"With me in charge (a grievous load!)
Along the way she lately trode,
In all, she gave no fear or pain,
Unless, at times, to hold the rein."

At last, on his supposed arrival at Wethersfield, he invites Tallmadge's judgment on the appearance of the equine muse, thus:

"Now judge, unless entirely sound
If she could bear me such a round.
It's certain then your muse is heal'd,
Or else, came sound from Weathersfield."

Before the end of the first term (October, 1773, to mid-March, 1774) in East Haddam, however, his work had aroused attention elsewhere, and in May, 1774, he took charge of a school in New London, called the "Union School,"—a larger school and a more lucrative position than that at East Haddam. In it Latin, English, arithmetic, and writing were taught. The salary was seventy pounds a year with a prospect of an increase, and he was allowed to teach private classes as well.

It will not surprise those acquainted with human nature that, as we will allow him to tell in a letter to a