“SONS OF LIBERTY”
One day Nathalie led the boys to a terrace, a few feet back of a
brown-shingled cottage across the road from Peckett’s, and which stood
on a lower spur of Garnet Mountain, facing the Franconia Range. Here, on
this grassy ridge, gently sloping down to a green meadow below, skirted
by a tree-fringed road edging the rocky pasture-land which gradually
merged into the lower slopes of the range, she pointed out King
Lafayette, and his lower mate, Lincoln, with his two slides. The
Sleeping Infant, lying between the latter and Garfield’s sharply defined
peak, was immediately heralded by the little maid, Sheila, as the
long-lost infant, which some kind-hearted fairy some day, with her magic
wand, would awaken. The Twins, and the huge Sleeping Giant, and some of
the lower peaks, all came in for a share in the mystic doings of the
little girl’s fanciful imagination.
The atmosphere was so translucent that each shaggy crest, pointed dome,
and spire of the range, sharply defined against the sapphire-blue of the
sky, stood forth with a strange lucidity, seemingly so near that one had
the inclination to put forth a hand to touch them.
Lafayette’s craggy foretop, standing up from the deep green-verdured
gorge that cleft one side of it, was startlingly like some huge
elephant’s head, with a mouse-colored, wrinkly and baggy-skinned trunk.
The boys accentuated the resemblance by locating two big rocks, which,
they declared, were the beady eyes of the animal, while Sheila insisted
she could see the eyes move.
As they rested on the ledge of a little circling wall of cobble-stones,
evidently the unfinished foundation of a stone tower, Nathalie told how
Lincoln’s rounded dome had been named in honor of a great American named
Abraham Lincoln. “Some people used to call him ‘Old Abe,’ or ‘Father
Abraham,’ not from any disrespect,” continued the girl, “but because he
was so kindly in his nature, his heart so filled with love for mankind,
that it was a title of honor, and showed the love of the people for
him.”
“Ain’t he the gink that got to be President of the United States, and
made the darkies free?” inquired Danny eagerly.
Nathalie nodded, and then led the boy on to tell how Lincoln, from a
long-legged, ungainly pioneer youth, brought up in a log cabin in the
wilds of Indiana, ended his career as the hero of the greatest republic
in the world.
The little newsie told his story importantly, proud to think that he had
remembered these odd bits of knowledge from the little schooling he had
received. And what he didn’t remember Nathalie did, dwelling at length
on the part this leader of men took in freeing the slaves, and what
slavery meant to the negroes of the South.
As the little group listened with wide-eyed interest, the girl suddenly
cried, “Oh, children! think what it would mean to you if you were not
allowed to move about as you pleased, but were forced to do what you did
not want to do, although you might be tired and hungry, and were driven
about like cattle, and lashed if you disobeyed your master!”
She then explained that all men were born free and equal, and that God
never intended that any man should be a bond-servant to his fellow-men.
“Every one,” she emphasized, “has the right to enjoy the beautiful
things of life without being subjected to cruel treatment, and forced to
hard labor, as the slaves had been, just because their skin was black
instead of white.
“But there is another kind of slavery.” said Nathalie earnestly, “which,
although it may not mean the slavery of the body, like that of the
negroes on a plantation, is the slavery of the will. That is, a man may
not be lashed on his back, but his will is made subject to another man’s
will, and he has to obey and direct his life the way this man says,
whether he wants to or not. All over the world, for centuries, the
people of different nations have been forced to obey the will of one
man, that is, the ruler, or the king, of the nation to which they
belonged. The peoples of the world have not been free; they have not had
the right, or the liberty, to do as they thought or felt.”
She then tried to make the children understand that liberty was
something as high and wide, and as vast, as the beautiful mountains
which rose before them. “It is like the air,” she said, “or the
atmosphere, which stretches about you on every side, and around the
great earth like a gray blanket. It is so big it can’t be seen, like the
mountains, or measured, and yet it can be felt. For if you were shut up
in a box without any air, or atmosphere to breathe into your lungs, you
would die. So liberty, God’s special gift, is so dear and sweet to man,
that without it he can’t grow or expand, for he is like a man shut up in
a box without air. He is like a little Tom Thumb, for he can only grow
just so high.”
Nathalie now interested the children in the story of the Pilgrims, the
pioneers of liberty in America, telling how, because they were not
allowed to have liberty under the rule of the English king, they came to
this new world and sought to worship God as they deemed right. In doing
this, she explained, they not only founded a colony where they had the
right to worship God as their conscience dictated, but they made
religious freedom possible for the people who came after them. By the
signing of the Compact in the cabin of the _Mayflower_, they gave this
nation democratic liberty, by giving every man the right to express his
thoughts and feelings, thus giving him a say as to how the people should
be ruled, which meant a government for and by the people.
Nathalie now told of the patriots, and how, in the War of the
Revolution, they fought the mother-country, England, in order to
maintain the liberty given them by the founders of the nation. “By
uniting the thirteen colonies into one, they not only added unity to
justice and liberty, but gave us the United States of America.
“These lovers of liberty also organized a society, in New York, which
became known as the Sons of Liberty, all the members determined to
defend with their lives the liberty and principles given them by their
forefathers. As liberty means the right to express our thoughts and
feelings, it also means that these thoughts and feelings must be good
and pure, _the best within us_,” added the girl with sudden gravity.
“And these Sons of Liberty were so called not only because they _fought
for liberty_, but because _they gave of their best to mankind_.”
Danny added another link to this story of liberty by telling about the
Declaration of Independence, and how the Liberty Bell was rung from the
old State House in Philadelphia, so that every one should know that a
new nation had been born. The ride of Paul Revere was described with
spirited impressiveness by the boy, as well as what had occurred on
Lexington common, and the famous battle by the old North Bridge at
Concord.
Whereupon Nathalie pointed out Mount Washington’s cone-tipped crest,
majestically rising above a wreath of silver-gray clouds, and explained
that, although the Indians had named it Agiochook, in later years the
white people had named it Mount Washington, in honor of the great man
Danny had been telling about.
After dwelling upon Washington’s magnificent character, and recalling
little incidents from his life, Nathalie said that, like the great
mountain that towered so far above its fellows, so George Washington,
the first President of this great nation, was known to civilization as
one of the greatest men in the world, because he had given of his best
to help his fellow-men, and proved that he was a _true_ Son of Liberty.
Jefferson Mountain, its crest rising in low humility near Washington’s
greater height; Adams, whose stony front stood forth in rugged grandeur
on the left; and Madison, Monroe, Franklin, Clay, and Webster, as well
as other peaks, were pointed out to the children, each one named for
some great American, who had proved his right to be known as a Son of
Liberty.
To be sure, some of the peaks were shrouded in a veil of mystical haze,
while others were but dimly discerned, as they peeped between the gaps
made by their nearer mates, but each and every one served to illustrate
in whose honor it had been named, and why he was a lover of what every
one loved—liberty.
Nathalie now drew the children’s attention to Mount Lafayette, and said
that this peak had also been named in honor of a great man, also a Son
of Liberty, although he was not an American. The children had heard the
name of Lafayette mentioned so often in connection with the present war,
that they listened with greedy avidity as the girl told about this “Boy
of Versailles,” as some one had called him, when, as the young Marquis
de Lafayette,—a mere boy,—he used to lead the revels at that famous
French palace in helping the girl queen, Marie Antoinette, make merry at
her garden parties, when her boy husband was too busy in his workshop,
taking some old clock apart, to entertain his guests at court.
She told how the little marquis loved to walk behind the brave soldiers
of the day, the one ambition of his life being his longing to be a
soldier. She told, too, of his life in the lonely castle among the
southern mountains of France, where his only companions were governesses
and masters, all intent upon drilling him to dance, to bow with courtly
grace, to pick up a lady’s handkerchief, and other accomplishments of
the court.
After leaving the College du Plessis, where his education as a courtier
was completed, he returned to his estate, now the heir to great wealth,
where he used to spend his time making friends with the peasants,—the
people who lived on his lands,—thus becoming acquainted with their mode
of life. In this way he learned the need of liberty, the liberty that
gave people the right to think and feel, and to express their thoughts
and feelings, and the great need that the people of the nations in the
world should have a voice in their own government, and thus learn to
govern themselves.
Nathalie then told how, when the patriots of America began to fight
against King George in order to gain their rights, that the young
nobleman, now tall and slender, with reddish hair and bright eyes, heard
of it, and, although an officer in the French army, he determined to go
to America and help these people of the colonies to win their liberty.
He had a young and lovely wife,—they had been sweethearts when
children,—and yet so inspired was he to help the Americans that he left
her. With a friend, the Baron de Kalb, he eluded the spies and officers
of his own country, and in various disguises finally reached Spain,
whence he embarked for America, and gallantly fought with the American
patriots during the War of the Revolution, winning fame not only for his
bravery, but for his great friendship for Washington.
“Indeed,” said the girl, as she finished her recital, he was a real Son
of Liberty, and it is a splendid thing to think that these two grand old
mountains, facing each other in such magnificent grandeur, should now be
the monuments to these two wonderful men, monuments, too, that can only
perish when the mountains turn and flee away at the command of the Most
High God.
“Lincoln, whose life-story you know,” Nathalie pointed to the
green-wooded heights of Mount Lincoln, “also proved himself a Son of
Liberty when he gave of the noblest and best that was in him to the
people, in his great struggle to free the slaves. In fact,” the girl
spoke a little sadly, “this great man was not only a Son of Liberty, but
he was a martyr to Liberty.” And then she told how he had lost his life
because of his heroic determination to do what he thought was right.
“Children,” cried the girl suddenly, facing the row of intent, eager
faces regarding her, “can any of you tell me who to-day are proving
themselves true Sons of Liberty?”
“The soldiers who are fighting in the trenches!” burst from Danny
quickly.
Before Nathalie could assent, a thin, quavering voice burst out with the
ringing cry, “Vive la Belgique! Vive la Belgique!”
“Good for you, Jean,” cried the girl, as she enthusiastically clapped
her hands in approval. “_It is long_ _live Belgium_. Yes, Jean, the
soldiers of Belgium, of France, England, and America, too, now, are
proving themselves Sons of Liberty, because they are all fighting to
give liberty to the world. And brave Belgium,” patting the shoulder of
the refugee, whose pale face was strangely illumined, “every man in that
little country has proved that he is a Son of Liberty, when, rather than
dishonor the great principles of liberty and justice, he took up arms
and defended it against the Germans when they made their mad rush to
Paris. They not only saved France, but every nation as well, saved it so
that each man in it could fight and thus give liberty to the world. Now,
children, let us cry with Jean, ‘Vive la Belgique.’”
When this cry ceased, Tony’s velvety black eyes, with a sly gleam of
humor lurking in their shadows, became scarlet flames, suddenly
remembering that his native land was also in the war, and, with dramatic
fervor, he yelled, “Viva l’Italia!”
Danny, not to be outdone in this burst of patriotism, immediately
started in with the lusty shout of, “Hurrah for the United States!
Hurrah for the United States!”
Altogether it was a very patriotic little company that stood by the old
stone ledge facing those blue-hazed mountains on that sunny afternoon
and “yelled their heads off,” as Danny said, in honor of the Sons of
Liberty, who were fighting in the trenches across the sea to give
liberty to the world.
After the shouting and demonstration of the patriots had begun to wane,
Nathalie put up her hand for silence, and then, in her simple way, the
way that somehow always seemed to go right to the heart of every child,
said very softly, “And now, children, let us show that we, too, each one
of us, want to do what is right, to give of our best to make others
happy. Let us show that, although we cannot go and fight in the
trenches, we are still Sons of Liberty, by keeping a big, deep place in
our hearts for the boys in the trenches, not only our American boys, but
the boys of the Allies, every soldier of every nation who is fighting
for the victory of peace and right.
“I know you all want to belong to the Sons of Liberty, that you would
like to show that you are real soldiers, fighting for the right; and so,
will you not bow your heads for a moment, and down in the big, deep
place in your hearts, silently say a little prayer? Just ask God that He
will bless the soldiers, these Sons of Liberty across the sea, who are
fighting for you and me, and give them a great victory in this world’s
battle for the rights of men, a victory that means happiness, love, and
peace for every one in the world.”