Now like smiths at their forges
Worked the red St. George's
Cannoneers,
And the villainous saltpetre
Rang a fierce discordant metre
Round their ears
As the swift
Storm-drift,
With hot sweeping anger, came the horseguards' clangor
On our flanks,
Then higher, higher, higher, burned the old-fashioned fire
Through the ranks!

Then the bare-headed colonel
Galloped through the white infernal
Powder-cloud;
And his broad sword was swinging,
And his brazen throat was ringing
Trumpet-loud;
Then the blue
Bullets flew.
And the trooper-jackets redden at the touch of the leaden
Rifle-breath;
And rounder, rounder, rounder, roared the iron six-pounder,
Hurling death!

WHEN THE PATRIOTS WAVERED.

Dr. John Witherspoon's Stirring Words, Which Brought the Continental
Congress to the Point of Decision on the Eventful Fourth of July, 1776.

On the morning of the Fourth of July, 1776, the members of the Continental
Congress, in session at Philadelphia, were deliberating on the proposed
Declaration of Independence. Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin
Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert R. Livingston, composing the committee
appointed for the purpose, had reported several days before the document
that is now familiar to every American schoolboy, but action had been
delayed, and on this eventful morning, when the Congress began its final
consideration, the vital character of the Declaration was recognized with
the growing hesitancy of an awed responsibility.

The patriots now saw that they were at the edge of an action by which all
chance of retreat would be cut off; that they were preparing to expose
themselves, their families, and their estates to harsh reprisals if their
revolution failed. At this crisis of painful silence a patriot arose--a
man not very old in years, but showing signs of approaching age in his
frosted locks. In vehement tones he said:

There is a tide in the affairs of men, a nick of time. We
perceive it now before us. That noble instrument upon your
table, which insures immortality to its author, should be
subscribed this very morning, by every pen in the house. He
who will not respond to its accents, and strain every nerve
to carry into