(1) Rev. Joseph Huntington, D.D.

A somewhat full description of the Rev. Joseph Huntington, D.D., is well worth placing among the friends of Nathan Hale. It was impossible for such a boy as Nathan to have been under the care of such a man as Dr. Huntington, first as pastor and then as his private teacher in his preparation for college, without having been strongly influenced by him. Indeed, scanning these old records of a parish of a hundred and fifty years ago, we cannot help feeling a strong personal attraction toward the Rev. Joseph Huntington.

Few men more fully prove the claim that many of the early New England pastors were eminently fitted to lead their people heavenward and also in the practical development of their daily lives.

Dr. Huntington lived a life evidently inspired by the finest ideals, and also by shrewd common sense, always so dear to the heart of a New Englander. It is a pleasure to recall the story of this man's useful life, and realize that besides the reverence almost invariably accorded to "the minister" in those days, he must have held the everyday affection and wholesome trust of his people. Year by year he proved himself not only their pastor, but a friend full of all kindly sympathies, never above a hearty laugh when mirth was rampant, or a sympathetic tear for hearts wrung with anguish.

He was born in Windham, Connecticut, in 1735. His ancestors came from England about 1640 and the family ultimately settled in Windham. His father, a man of somewhat arbitrary character, had determined that Joseph should be a clothier, and forced him to remain in that business until he was twenty-one. His intellectual ability was thought to be somewhat remarkable, and his moral character so good that his pastor advised him to begin a course of study for the ministry. He completed his preparation for Yale College in an unusually short time, and was graduated there in the year 1762.

His call to be settled over the First Church in Coventry was received so soon after his graduation that we are forced to believe that his theological course must have been brief. The parish in Coventry had been greatly reduced in numbers. The meeting-house had been allowed to go to decay, and the religious life of the parish was in a corresponding state of depression. His ordination services were held out of doors,—whether because the assemblage was too large for the church, or because the building was too dilapidated, does not appear. The first thing Mr. Huntington did after his settlement was to urge upon his people the project of building a new meeting-house. They responded so heartily that in a short time they had built the best church in the whole region, having expended for it about five thousand dollars—a large sum in those days.

Dr. Huntington does not appear to have been a laborious student. He had few books of his own, largely depending upon borrowing. But he had a remarkable memory and the power of so making his own whatever he read that his scholarship and his originality appear never to have been questioned. The Rev. Daniel Waldo says of him that he was rather above the middle height, slender and graceful in form, and that he seemed to have had an instinctive desire to make everybody around him happy. This, added to his uniform politeness, caused him to be very popular in general society.

The Rev. Mr. Waldo adds that Dr. Huntington was fond of pleasantry and gives this instance:

A very dull preacher who had studied theology with him was invited by his people to resign, and they paid him for his services chiefly in copper coin. On telling Dr. Huntington how he had been paid, he was advised to go back and preach a farewell sermon from the text, "Alexander the coppersmith did me much evil." Many such anecdotes and repartees of Dr. Huntington were current in Coventry for years after his death.

This brief summary of Dr. Joseph Huntington's life shows that the men to whom Richard Hale intrusted the preparation of his three sons for entering Yale was not only a Christian, but a gentleman of the finest culture. He was able not only to impart to Enoch, Nathan and David Hale the rudiments of scholarship requisite for entering Yale, but to inspire such boys with the keenest appreciation of courtesy, broad mental endowments, and a wholesome zeal for high public service.

The correspondence concerning the Union School in New London shows that Dr. Huntington gave Nathan Hale the necessary recommendation for the place. It is on record in Hale's diary that on December 27, 1775, the day after his arrival home from Camp Winter Hill, he visited Dr. Huntington; and in one of his New York letters he wrote, "I always with respect remember Mr. Huntington and shall write to him if time permits."

Admitting that Nathan Hale's father and mother were his most important early friends, we believe that Dr. Huntington, as pastor, tutor, and friend during the six years before Nathan entered college, may have stood not far behind the parents in deep influence upon his character—that splendid character, destined to be one of the beacon lights of our country's history.

(2) Alice Adams

Studying the lives of the founders of our republic, we are interested in noting the early marriages that so often occurred, and which seem to have been justified by the early mental maturity of the young men and women in the eighteenth century.

With early marriage, large families were the rule and not the exception; and eulogize the forefathers of New England as much as one may, no one at all familiar with the lives of the mothers of those generations can question the share that the foremothers had in broadening the lives and inspiring the characters of the husbands and sons in that early period. Nathan Hale showed the power of heredity, and Alice Adams, the woman he is said to have loved, proved well that she too had come of no unworthy stock.

It has been given few women to be so worthily loved as was Alice Adams, from the time we catch our first glimpse of her till the last, in her eighty-ninth year. She was born in June, 1757. Her mother married Deacon Hale when Alice was in her thirteenth year. We do not know when Alice first met Nathan Hale; but we do know that while both were very young they found out that they loved each other, and proceeded to engage themselves without consulting their elders. Nathan had several years of work preparatory to his profession still before him, and, acting as they supposed in the best interests of both the boy and the girl, the mother and elder sister Sarah promptly discouraged the engagement and it was broken.

In February, 1773, while Nathan was still at Yale and before she was sixteen, Alice was married to Elijah Ripley, a prosperous merchant at Coventry. Within two years Mr. Ripley died, aged twenty-eight, leaving behind him a little son, also named Elijah, who died in his second year.

After Mr. Ripley's death, Mrs. Ripley with her baby boy returned to Deacon Hale's home almost as an adopted daughter, comfortably provided for by the estate of her late husband. A member of the Hale family, she must have seen that whatever was true of Nathan Hale in the days when they were boy and girl together, he, now a Yale graduate and a man among men, first as teacher and then as soldier, was even more worthy of her love than in their early days. It is probable that they corresponded more or less, though happily none of the letters of either are preserved for the curious to delight in. All we know is that in December, 1775, a year after her husband's death, Nathan Hale stopped in Coventry while absent from camp on army business, and the broken engagement has been said to have been then renewed, this time without opposition.

Having been married and widowed, and having lost her little son, Alice Adams Ripley was now free to listen to the claims of the first love that had entered her heart. What the few brief months that remained to Nathan Hale must have meant to Alice Ripley, believing in him and caring for him, only the noblest women can comprehend.

In regard to the letters written by Nathan Hale on the morning of his execution, one of these letters is said to have been written to his mother. One or two of his biographers have inferred that this must be an error, and that it was written to his father or to a brother. With the natural delicacy always so conspicuous in him, a letter to his "mother," so called, in reality the mother of one whom we believe to have been his betrothed wife, Alice Adams Ripley, who would show it to Alice and undoubtedly give it to her, was probably what he would have written. The others would know what he had written, but Alice Adams would doubtless possess the letter.

Alice Adams was to live many, many years, to become one of the most notable women in the city in which she dwelt; so honored that a copy of her portrait has long hung in the AthenÆum, Hartford's finest shrine for such portraits.

It was said of her that for several years after Nathan's death she had no intention of marrying, but, after a widowhood of ten years, events—some say changed circumstances—led her to accept an offer of marriage from William Lawrence, of Hartford, which was thenceforth her home. For many years she was naturally associated with the social life of that city.

Whatever letters may have passed between Nathan Hale and Alice Adams Ripley, no trace of them remains to-day. For this we can only be grateful that, unlike other unfortunate lovers,—Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browing, for instance,—not one word remains of their correspondence. That belonged to him and to her alone. It is fortunate that no mere curiosity hunter can feast his eyes or gossip over the words these two people wrote to each other.

To Alice's husband Nathan's father gave the powder horn she once spoke of as having seen Nathan working upon in his customary intense fashion, "doing that one thing as if there was nothing else to be thought of at that time." Its being given to Mr. Lawrence by Nathan's father, to whom it must have been dear, proves that Mr. Lawrence, as well as his wife, was a welcome addition to the Hale family. Mr. Lawrence in turn gave it to his son William, and it is now treasured by the Connecticut Historical Society.

Mrs. Lawrence lived well into the nineteenth century, dying in 1845, in her eighty-ninth year. She was thoroughly appreciated in Hartford, but it is from the pen of a granddaughter, in a note written to the Hon. I. W. Stuart, that the best description of Mrs. Lawrence is given. Speaking of her grandmother she said: "In person she was rather below the middle height, with full, round figure, rather petite. She possessed a mild, amiable countenance in which was reflected that intelligent superiority which distinguished her even in the days of Dwight, Hopkins, and Barlow in Hartford—men who could appreciate her, who delighted in her wit and work, and who, with a coterie of others of that period who are still in remembrance, considered her one of the brightest ornaments of their society.

"A fair, fresh complexion ... bright, intelligent, hazel eyes, and hair of a jetty blackness, will give you some idea of her looks—the crowning glory of which was the forehead that surpassed in beauty any I ever saw, and was the admiration of my mature years. I portray her, with the exception of the hair, as she appeared to me in her eighty-eighth year. I never tired of gazing on her youthful complexion—upon her eyes which retained their youthful luster unimpaired, and enabled her to read without any artificial aid; and upon her hand and arm, which, though shrunken much from age, must in her younger days have been fit study for a sculptor.

"Her character was everything that was lovely. A lady who had known her many years, writing to me after her death, says, 'Never shall I forget her unceasing kindness to me, and her noble and generous disposition. From my first acquaintance with her, and amid all the varied trials through which she was called to pass, I had ever occasion to admire the calm and christian spirit she uniformly exhibited. To you I will say it, I never knew so faultless a character—so gentle, so kind. That meek expression, that affectionate eye, are as present to my recollection now as though I had seen them but yesterday.'

"Such is the language of one who had known her long and well and whose testimony would be considered more impartial than that of one who like myself had been the constant recipient of her unceasing kindness and affection."

When she died, the story of the early home of the Hales found its completion. Shall we pity them or congratulate them that in those long ago days so many sorrows came to them?—testing their strength, developing their faith, and fitting them, as their days went by, for life and service beyond.

The following chivalric poem was written by Nathan Hale—perhaps in camp. It expresses his mental as well as emotional appreciation of Alice Adams. It is here given exactly as it appears in the original manuscript, with almost no punctuation marks. It is probable that this is a first rough draft, intended to be improved at some future time. There are marks on the margin of the paper which show that the writer had possible alterations in mind.

To Alicia

Alicia, born with every striking charm
The eye to ravish or the heart to warm
Fair in thy form, still fairer in thy mind
With beauty wisdom sense with sweetness join'd
Great without pride, & lovely without Art
Your looks good nature words good sense impart
Thus formed to charm Oh deign to hear my song
Whose best whose sweetest strains to you belong.
Let others toil amidst the lofty air
By fancy led through every cloud above
Let empty Follies build her castles there
My thoughts are settled on the friend I love.
Oh friend sincere of soul divinely great
Shedest thou for me a wretch the sorrowed tear
What thanks can I in this unhappy state
Return to you but Gratitude sincere
T'is friendship pure that now demand my lays
A theme sincere that Aid my feeble song
Raised by that theme I do not fear to praise
Since your the subject where due praise belong
Ah dearest girl in whom the gods have join'd
The real blessings, which themselves approve
Can mortals frown at such an heavenly mind
When Gods propitious shine on you they love
Far from the seat of pleasure now I roam
The pleasing landscape now no more I see
Yet absence ne'er shall take my thoughts from home
Nor time efface my due regards for thee.

(3) Benjamin Tallmadge

Benjamin Tallmadge, one year older than Nathan Hale, was Hale's classmate and one of his correspondents. Like Hale he became a teacher for a time, and then, entering the army, served with distinction throughout the war. He was intrusted by Washington with important services. In October, 1780, he was stationed with Col. Jameson at North Castle. He had been out on active service against the enemy and returned on the evening of the day when Major AndrÉ had been brought there and had been started back to Arnold for explanations. This was four years after the death of Hale.

Listening to the account of the capture, and the pass from Arnold, Tallmadge at once surmised the importance of retaining AndrÉ and insisted upon his being brought back.

When AndrÉ was once more in American hands, Tallmadge is said to have been the first to suspect, from the prisoner's deportment as he walked to and fro and turned sharply upon his heel to retrace his steps, that he was bred to arms and was an important British officer. Major Tallmadge was charged with his custody, and was almost constantly with him until his execution. Tallmadge writes: "Major AndrÉ became very inquisitive to know my opinion as to the result of his capture. In other words, he wished me to give him candidly my opinion as to the light in which he would be viewed by General Washington and a military tribunal if one should be ordered.

"This was the most unpleasant question that had been propounded to me, and I endeavored to evade it, unwilling to give him a true answer. When I could no longer evade his importunity and put off a full reply, I remarked to him as follows: 'I had a much loved classmate in Yale College, by the name of Nathan Hale, who entered the army in the year 1775. Immediately after the battle of Long Island, General Washington wanted information respecting the strength, position, and probable movements of the enemy.

"'Captain Hale tendered his services, went over to Brooklyn, and was taken just as he was passing the outposts of the enemy on his return.' Said I with emphasis,

"'Do you remember the sequel of this story?'

"'Yes,' said AndrÉ, 'he was hanged as a spy. But you surely do not consider his case and mine alike?'

"I replied, 'Yes, precisely similar, and similar will be your fate.'

"He endeavored to answer my remarks, but it was manifest he was more troubled in spirit than I had ever seen him before."

Major Tallmadge walked with AndrÉ from the Stone House where he had been confined to the place of execution, and parted with him under the gallows, "overwhelmed with grief," he says, "that so gallant an officer and so accomplished a gentleman should come to such an ignominious end."

What would have occurred if AndrÉ had not been recalled, but had reached Arnold—whether both could have escaped by boat to the Vulture as did Arnold; whether Arnold, leaving AndrÉ to his fate, could have escaped alone under these suspicious circumstances; or whether Hamilton and the others, who were dining with Arnold when the news of AndrÉ's capture reached him, could have managed to hold both until Washington's arrival, cannot now be surmised. We only know that to Major Tallmadge belongs the credit of the recall and retention of AndrÉ as a prisoner, thereby preventing the loss of West Point.

Major Tallmadge remained in the army and was greatly trusted by Washington, rendering important assistance in the secret service. He took part in many battles and in time became a colonel. For sixteen years he was in Congress. He died at the age of eighty, leaving sons and grandsons who won honored names in various callings.

(4) William Hull

When Captain William Hull, impelled by a strong natural caution, spoke as forcibly as he could of the disastrous results that might follow Nathan Hale's acceptance of the office of a spy in his country's service, he described not only the result of the failure which seemed almost inevitable, and which would result in a disgraceful death, but also the contempt that would be felt among his fellow-officers should he be successful. Hale, as we have seen, deliberately chose these dangers that appeared so appalling, and lost his life in the manner predicted by Hull.

Could Captain Hull, on that September day in 1776, have looked forward to other days in 1812, when, because of his surrender of Detroit, he himself would stand as the most disgraced man in the American army, he would have wondered what disastrous set of causes could have doomed him to lower depths of discredit than he had imagined possible for his friend Hale.

This is the story of Captain Hull as told by his grandson, the Rev. James Freeman Clarke, a Unitarian clergyman, and an author of high repute.

After remaining in the army throughout the Revolutionary War, where he distinguished himself on repeated occasions, constantly rising in rank, he settled in Massachusetts, practicing law, becoming prominent as a legislator, and finally as one of the Massachusetts judges. In 1805, as General Hull, he was appointed governor of the territory of Michigan by President Jefferson, and removed thither, stipulating that in case of war he should not be required to serve both as general and governor, as he did not believe the duties of both could be successfully administered by the same person.

The outbreak of the war of 1812, which occurred while Madison was President, found what was then the northern frontier of America wholly unprepared for hostilities. The country was new, with dense forests and few roads. There were no adequate means of land defense, and no adequate navy to patrol the lakes.

The British, as usual, had all the vessels needed, well-drilled soldiers, and, more terrible than all, more than a thousand Indians, ready to commit any atrocities upon defenseless white settlers. As Hull had insisted, another officer was appointed to command the troops, such as they were, but this officer became ill and Governor Hull was forced to take command.

In the meantime, no amount of urgent entreaties could induce the authorities at Washington to send reËnforcements to the assistance of the defenseless settlers. The American troops were unprepared to maintain their own position, and absolutely unable to conquer and annex Canada, as the government expected them to do. General Hull found himself with some eight hundred men facing more than fifteen hundred British regulars, and threatened in the rear by a thousand Indians.

What President Madison or any of his officers would have done, we cannot say. They appear to have thought that it was General Hull's duty to annihilate the British army, effectually dispose of the Indians, and present Canada to the American government.

General Hull, however, was a practical soldier. He knew the fate that would await the women and children in his territory, to say nothing of his small army, if he risked a battle and was defeated, as he surely would be; so he did what seemed to him the only possible thing to save the people of Michigan. He surrendered. Canada remained unannexed; the white settlers of Michigan were not delivered to the tender mercies of the Indians, and General Hull paid the penalty of the independent stand he had taken.

He probably foresaw that he must face a terrible ordeal. The whole country appeared to be roused against him, and Hull at once became the best-hated man in America. A court-martial was appointed.

At first it was hoped that he would be convicted of treason, but the evidence showed that this charge could not be sustained. He was tried for cowardice in face of the enemy, found guilty, and sentenced to be shot. The latter part of the sentence President Madison remitted, in consideration of his past eminent services in the army. So, stamped with indelible disgrace by all who did not know the facts, a ruined and dishonored man, in his sixty-first year General Hull went back to the farm in Newton that had come to him through his wife. Here, surrounded by the most devoted affection, he passed his few remaining years.

A ruined and discredited man he truly was,—the reputation and the honor due him from his countrymen irrevocably lost and by no fault of his own. Yet his grandson, the Rev. James Freeman Clarke, asserts that he was not once heard to say an unkind word about the government that had treated him so cruelly.

After his death, in 1825, one of his daughters wrote the story of his life from his own writings, and the Rev. James Freeman Clarke sketched for the world an outline of his grandfather's services in Michigan. This shows that the man who, in his youth, tried to dissuade his friend Nathan Hale from accepting the rÔle of martyr, himself, in his old age, bravely and gently endured a martyrdom compared to which the ostracism he predicted for Hale, even if he succeeded in his mission, was but a passing dream.

(5) Stephen Hempstead

To Stephen Hempstead, a sergeant in Nathan Hale's company in 1776, we are indebted for the most reliable account that is known of Hale's movements after he left New York in the service from which he was not to return. Sergeant Hempstead removed to Missouri after the war, and this account was first published in the Missouri Republican in 1827. His own words describing his last days with Hale are these:

"Captain Hale was one of the most accomplished officers, of his grade and age, in the army. He was a native of the town of Coventry, state of Connecticut, and a graduate of Yale College—young, brave, honorable—and at the time of his death a Captain in Col. Webb's Regiment of Continental Troops. Having never seen a circumstantial account of his untimely and melancholy end, I will give it. I was attached to his company and in his confidence. After the retreat of our army from Long Island, he informed me, he was sent for to Head Quarters, and was solicited to go over to Long Island to discover the disposition of the enemy's camps, &c., expecting them to attack New York, but that he was too unwell to go, not having recovered from a recent illness; that upon a second application he had consented to go, and said I must go as far with him as I could, with safety, and wait for his return.

"Accordingly, we left our Camp on Harlem Heights, with the intention of crossing over the first opportunity; but none offered until we arrived at Norwalk, fifty miles from New York. In that harbor there was an armed sloop and one or two row galleys. Capt. Hale had a general order to all armed vessels, to take him to any place he should designate: he was set across the Sound, in the sloop, at Huntington (Long Island) by Capt. Pond, who commanded the vessel. Capt. Hale had changed his uniform for a plain suit of citizen's brown clothes, with a round broad-brimmed hat, assuming the character of a Dutch schoolmaster, leaving all his other clothes, commission, public and private papers, with me, and also his silver shoebuckles, saying they would not comport with his character of schoolmaster, and retaining nothing but his College diploma, as an introduction to his assumed calling. Thus equipped, we parted for the last time in life. He went on his mission, and I returned back again to Norwalk, with orders to stop there until he should return, or hear from him, as he expected to return back again to cross the sound, if he succeeded in his object."

So far as there is any other evidence, it tends to confirm this part of Sergeant Hempstead's report, and he is to-day considered one of the most valuable authorities on Hale's last intercourse with brother soldiers.

Of the details of his captain's arrest and execution, which are told in the last part of the account, and of which Hempstead had no personal knowledge, he declares that he was "authentically informed" and did "most religiously believe" them. Some of the incidents he gives appear to have been proved since to have no basis in fact; others that vary from reports now accepted may yet, with more light gained, be found to be true.

The second letter sent by Sergeant Hempstead to the Republican deals with his experience in the army in 1781, when he was one of the victims of the brutalities inflicted upon the hapless prisoners of war at Fort Griswold, Groton, Connecticut. The injuries he received there were, as he tells us, so severe that his own wife, having searched for his body in the fort among the dead, scanned carefully the face of every wounded soldier sheltered by pitying neighbors, passing him twice without recognizing him—he too ill to make any sign—and then resuming her search among the dead.

Later she found him, and after a time he regained sufficient strength to be carried to his home. He was, however, incapacitated by his injuries for service in the field, and was thenceforth able to perform only duties calling for honest watchfulness rather than personal labor. After the removal to Missouri the whole family prospered greatly. He settled on a farm near the city of St. Louis, where he lived many years, respected by all who knew him. He died in 1831.

(6) Asher Wright

Near the place where the Hale family lie buried is another grave covering the dust of Asher Wright, once Nathan Hale's attendant. He was so strongly attached to Hale that his tragic death is thought to have unsettled his mind so that he never was quite himself again, and never able to earn his own living. For several years after Nathan Hale's death Wright was not heard of in his early home. Then he came back to Coventry, bringing with him some of Nathan Hale's effects that he had doubtless carried with him in his wandering, giving them, on his return, to Deacon Hale's family.

Asher Wright died in his ninetieth year, having lived all his later days in his house not far from the Hale home. His pension of ninety-six dollars a year was so supplemented by the Hale family, and by David Hale of New York, editor of the Journal of Commerce, that his last days were very comfortable. His grave is marked by a marble headstone giving his name, age, and former connection with Nathan Hale.

His farm adjoined that of the Hale homestead and has now become a part of it.

(7) Elisha Bostwick

One letter concerning Nathan Hale comes to us with a curious and interesting history.

Not long ago, while in the city of Washington, a loyal friend and warm admirer of Nathan Hale, George Dudley Seymour, Esq., of New Haven, had his attention called to a remarkable tribute to Hale. It proved to have been written by a fellow-soldier in the Revolutionary War, Captain Elisha Bostwick. This remarkable document was found in the musty records of a very old pension list, and the portion relating to Nathan Hale is here given. It came to light a hundred and thirty-five years after Hale's execution. We give this valuable record of Captain Bostwick's as it appeared in the Hartford Courant of December 15th, 1914:

"I will now make some observations upon the amiable & unfortunate Capt. Nathan Hale whose fate is so well known; for I was with him in the same Regt. both at Boston & New York & until the day of his tragical death; & although of inferior grade in office was always in the habits of friendship & intimacy with him: & my remembrance of his person, manners & character is so perfect that I feel inclined to make some remarks upon them: for I can now in imagination see his person & hear his voice—his person I should say was a little above the common stature in height, his shoulders of a moderate breadth, his limbs strait & very plump: regular features—very fair skin—blue eyes—flaxen or very light hair which was always kept short—his eyebrows a shade darker than his hair & his voice rather sharp or Piercing—his bodily agility was remarkable. I have seen him follow a football & kick it over the tops of the trees in the Bowery at New York (an exercise which he was fond of)—his mental powers seemed to be above the common sort—his mind of a sedate and sober cast, & he was undoubtedly Pious; for it was remarked that when any of the soldiers of his company were sick he always visited them & usually prayed for & with them in their sickness.—A little anecdote I will relate; one day he accidentally came across some of his men in a bye place playing cards—he spoke—what are you doing—this won't do,—give me your cards, they did so, & he chopd them to pieces, & it was done in such a manner that the men were rather pleased than otherwise—his activity on all occasions was wonderful—he would make a pen the quickest & best of any man—

"Innumerable instances of occurrences which took place in the Army I could relate, but who would care for them: Perhaps it may be thought by some that I have already been at the expense of Prolixity. Nobody in these days feels as I do, left here alone, & they cannot if they would, but to me it is a melancholy pleasure to go back to those Scenes of fear & anguish & after the laps of 50 years (1826 was in my 78th year) to rumenate upon them which I think I can do with as bright a recollection as though they were present—One more reflection I will make—why is it that the delicious Capt. Hale should be left & lost in an unknown grave & forgotten!—

"The foregoing Statements were made from Memory & recollection & from documents & Memorandoms which I kept.—Elisha Bostwick."

(8) Edward Everett Hale

Of the subsequent records of the Hale family no trace remains that is not honorable. Nathan's brother Enoch was settled at Westhampton, Massachusetts, in 1777, where he remained a useful and beloved pastor for sixty years. Enoch's eldest son, Nathan, graduated at Williams College in 1804. He was editor-in-chief of the Boston Daily Advertiser for more than forty years. Nathan's son, Nathan, a Havard graduate, became associate editor of the Boston Advertiser.

Lucretia Peabody Hale, a well-known writer in her day, whose delightful and amusing "Peterkin Papers" are still read and remembered, was a granddaughter of the Rev. Enoch Hale.

Edward Everett Hale, a man beloved by every one who knew him, was the son of "a great journalist," Nathan, grandson of Enoch, and therefore grandnephew of Captain Nathan Hale. He, too, had a son Nathan who died in his early manhood. Edward Everett Hale was one of the most commanding and admired of men, with rare endowments as clergyman, author, editor, and patriot.

Those interested in the study of his granduncle, Nathan, owe to him the preservation of many records of the Hale family, and an arrangement of the genealogy of the Hale family, made while he was a Unitarian minister in Worcester, Massachusetts, and kindly lent to the Hon. I. W. Stuart, one of Hale's early biographers.

It will be long before some of Edward Everett Hale's vital words are forgotten; longer still before his marvelous story, "The Man Without a Country," shall cease to thrill its readers.

The impassioned sentences in which he cites its unhappy hero as speaking to a boy—a midshipman—while under heavy stress, read, "For your country, boy, and for your flag, never dream a dream but of serving her as she bids you, though the service carry you through a thousand hells. No matter what happens to you, no matter who flatters you or who abuses you, never look at another flag, never let a night pass but you pray God to bless that flag. Remember, boy, that behind all these men you have to do with, behind officers, and government, and people even, there is the Country Herself, your Country, and that you belong to Her as you belong to your own mother."

No one justly comprehending the bed rock of Edward Everett Hale's boundless patriotism can doubt that if the same call of duty had come to him that came in bygone days to his relative, young Nathan Hale, he would have done exactly as Nathan Hale did. That call did not come, but to the end of his days Edward Everett Hale lived for his country as nobly as Nathan Hale died for it.