When Captain Montressor told Hale's dismayed friends of the terrible doom that had befallen their comrade, it must have seemed as if all the influence Hale might have had in a prolonged life, all that could come to such a man, had been sacrificed. We must not blame them if the question involuntarily rose in their hearts, "Why such waste? Why was such an influence so permanently destroyed?" Curiously enough, many years passed with little special notice by the public of Hale's death. But the leaven of patriotism works, even though slowly, and step by step Hale was coming to his own. Little by little the memory of his sacrifice for his country, and the fact that he had left words that should glow with increasing splendor, took possession of those who had ears to hear and hearts to remember. Old Linonia in Yale did not forget the splendid boy, once its Chancellor, who died as he had lived. Linonia's records still bear, in clear and On its one-hundredth anniversary, July 27, 1853,—Commencement Week,—the poet of the occasion was Francis Miles Finch, Yale, 1846, later Judge of the New York Court of Appeals. As poet, Mr. Finch of course recalled many former members of the society. He ended with a poem on Nathan Hale in which he held his listeners spellbound as stanza after stanza, magnetic in proportion to their truthful beauty, fell from his lips. There has been a further service to his country by Judge Finch. His own character has been graven into two different poems,—the one just referred to, and one that he wrote later. The latter poem had, undoubtedly, a powerful influence in causing our national Decoration Day to be celebrated throughout the United States. The story of this poem is interesting. In a town in Mississippi certain Southern women went on a spring day, soon after the close of the Civil War, to cover with flowers the graves of their beloved dead. The gracious and tender thought must have come to them that in the graves of aliens buried among them lay those as deeply mourned in North Certainly no sweeter suggestion could have been more tenderly carried out than that which led these bereaved women to spread flowers over the graves of those who were once their enemies. Mr. Finch was told of this incident, and the lines he wrote show his appreciation of the "generous deed." The poem, "The Blue and the Gray," did much to heal the wounds in both North and South. The two poems by Judge Francis Miles Finch are quoted here, the first with the drum-beat pulsing through it; the second in musical, flowing lines that carry in them sorrow, loyalty, and the community of a common bereavement. Hale's Fate and FameAnd one there was—his name immortal now— The Blue and the GrayBy the flow of the inland river, On the one hundred and tenth anniversary of the evacuation of New York by the British—November 25, 1893—a bronze statue of Nathan Hale was presented to the city of New York. It was given by the New York Society of the "Sons of the American Rev During the exercises at the unveiling of this statue Dr. Edward Everett Hale said: "The occasion, I suppose, is without a parallel in history. Certainly, I know of no other instance where, more than a century after the death of a boy of twenty-one, his countrymen assembled in such numbers as are here to do honor to his memory and to dedicate the statue which preserves it. "He died near this spot, saying, 'I am sorry that I have but one life to give for my country.' And because that boy said those words, and because he died, thousands of other young men have given their lives to his country; have served her as she bade them serve her, even though they died as she bade them die." The day's celebration was concluded by a dinner of the Society. Dr. Hale spoke on this occasion also. He said in part: "Let us never forget that this is the monument of a young man—that he is the young man's hero. Let us never forget how the country then trusted young men and how worthy they were of the trust. It was at the very time of which I spoke that Washington first knew Hamilton and asked him to his tent. Hamilton had already won the confidence of Greene. Hamilton was, I think, in his nineteenth year. Knox, who commanded Hamilton's regiment, was, I think, twenty-four. Webb, who commanded Hale's regiment, was twenty-two. When, the next year, Washington welcomed Lafayette, whom Congress appointed major-general, he [Lafayette] was not twenty. And Washington himself, before whom others stood abashed, had only attained the venerable age of forty-four. The country needed her young men. She called for them and she had them. It is one of those young men who, dying at twenty-one, leaves as his only word of regret that he has but one life to give to her." Although it is now known that Hale was not executed near City Hall Park, in some respects there could be no more fitting location for a monument to him than this, perhaps the busiest con Since this statue was placed, memorials of various kinds to Nathan Hale have been erected in several parts of the country. The schoolhouses in which he taught, although not occupying their original sites, have been restored, and are in possession of patriotic societies. To-day Yale, endowed with buildings costing millions, is learning that stone and mortar, in edifices however beautiful, do not enshrine their noblest memories. Through a few friends of Yale, a statue of Nathan Hale by Bela Lyon Pratt has recently been placed near the oldest college building, Connecticut Hall. This building has been restored to the appearance it bore when Nathan Hale dwelt therein. Who shall say that the statue of the bound boy, facing death so manfully, will not prove one of Yale's noblest endowments? Still another beautiful statue of Nathan Hale by William Ordway Partridge may be seen in the city of St. Paul, Minn. Happily, Nathan Hale's ability to die for his country is but one side of a Yale shield from which gleam the names of hundreds of her sons, who, doubtless as ready to die for their country as he, had they been in his place, have proved their power to live for God and for their native land. Everywhere, in all quarters of the world, the Nathan Hale spirit of unselfish devotion has inspired the sons of Yale to the noblest service they could render; and every man, young or old, who passes the statue of Nathan Hale will realize that hosts have lived lives inspired by the same splendid spirit. Nathan Hale himself went forth from his alma mater filled with the joyous hopes and ambitions that have filled the souls of many other men, all unconscious of the fact that the finest heroism and the highest self-sacrifice lay just before him, but conscious that he meant to be ready for the best that life could give him. He was ready; and the best of life for him was the power to die as he died. |