"O Beautiful! my Country! ..., What were our lives without thee? What all our lives to save thee? We reck not what we gave thee; We will not dare to doubt thee, But ask whatever else, and we will dare!" Commemoration Ode , JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL THE WORLD SYNDICATE PUBLISHING CO. Cleveland, O.               New York, N. Y. PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA Copyright, 1915, By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. Set up and electrotyped. Published May, 1915. Reprinted August, 1925; March, 1929....

It is to-day a recognized fact that no life worthy of our reverence, or even a life calculated to awaken our fear, is the result of accident. Whatever may be the character, its basis has been the result of long-developing causes. This the life of Nathan Hale well illustrates. He was born at a time and under influences that were sure to develop the best qualities in him. He was an immediate descendant of the best of the Puritans on both sides of the sea. His great-grandfather, John Hale, was the

In September, 1769, accompanied by Enoch, an older brother, Nathan Hale entered the Freshman class at Yale. His personal traits easily won the hearts of his classmates, while his quick understanding, his high scholarship, and his loyalty to the college standards made him as popular among tutors and professors as among his classmates. It is pleasant to know that, from the time we first learn of him until we see him standing beside the fatal tree, he appears to have won all hearts worth winning. B

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

The place "allotted" to him was that of lieutenant in the third company of the 7th Connecticut regiment, commanded by Colonel Charles Webb. No doubt exists that Lieutenant Nathan Hale was the same Nathan Hale who had won distinction in all his college work, in his subsequent teaching, and in all the events thus far associated with his early manhood, with this difference; he was now lifted to a line of service that in his opinion seemed the highest possible for him to follow, and no one who studi

In the letter just quoted, Washington wrote further: "Whither they [the enemy] are now bound,... I know not, but as New York and Hudson's River are the most important objects they can have in view ... therefore as soon as they embarked, I detached a brigade of six regiments to that government and when they sailed another brigade composed of the same number, and tomorrow another brigade of five regiments will march. In a day or two more, I shall follow myself, and be in New York ready to receive

Writing of these events afterward, Captain Hull said, "It was evident that the superior force of the British would soon give them possession of New York. The Commander-in-chief, therefore, took a position at Fort Washington at the other end of the island. To ascertain the further object of the enemy was now a subject of anxious inquiry with General Washington." In a letter to General Heath at this crisis Washington wrote as follows: "As everything in a manner depends upon obtaining intelligence

From Enoch Hale's diary, parts of which were first published by his famous grandson, Edward Everett Hale, we learn how the news reached the Hale family. Enoch writes as follows: "September 30. Afternoon. Ride to Rev. Strong's [his uncle] Salmon Brook [Connecticut]. Hear a rumor that Capt. Hale, belonging to the east side of Connecticut River near Colchester, who was educated at College, was sentenced to hang in the enemy's lines at New York, being taken as a spy, or reconnoitering their camp. Ho

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 leave

(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 p

Robert Hale arrived in Massachusetts in 1632. He was one of those sent from the first church in Boston to form the first church in Charlestown in 1632, and was a deacon of this church. He was a blacksmith by trade. He also had a gift for practical mathematics, being regularly employed by the General Court of Massachusetts as a surveyor of new plantations. His son John, of whom mention has been made in connection with the witchcraft delusion, was a graduate of Harvard in 1657. Samuel, the fourth

For some time after the death of Nathan Hale a report was circulated, and apparently substantiated, that he had been betrayed into the hands of the British by a Tory cousin. Ultimately this report was printed in a Newburyport (Massachusetts) newspaper of the day, and read by Mr. Samuel Hale of Portsmouth, New Hampshire. This Mr. Hale was a prominent teacher and a strong friend of the American cause, and uncle both to Nathan Hale and to Samuel Hale, the cousin who was said to have betrayed Nathan

If Nathan Hale was in many respects the most notable American martyr, another man, in the English army, four years later met a doom that to the English appears to have exalted him to a rank corresponding to Nathan Hale's. For a long time there was a glamour about André that lifted him above the place to which, in the minds of many, he rightfully belonged, and comparisons have often been made between him and Hale, as if in reality their services and their characters justified such comparison. It