you will think it _impossible for me to
hinder it_, if any of them will persist in communicating to inferiour
officers and soldiers what ought to be kept secret. I am informed that
the Boston newspapers are filled with paragraphs from private letters
relating to the expedition. Will your Excellency permit me to say I
think it may be of ill consequence? Would it not be convenient, if your
Excellency should forbid the Printers' inserting such news?" Verily, if
_tempora mutantur,_ we may question the _et nos mutamur in illis;_ and
if tongues be leaky, it will need all hands at the pumps to save the
Ship of State. Our history dates and repeats itself. If Sassycus (rather
than Alcibiades) find a parallel in Beauregard, so Weakwash, as he is
called by the brave Lieutenant Lion Gardiner, need not seek far among
our own Sachems for his antitype.]

I love to start out arter night's begun,
An' all the chores about the farm are done,
The critters milked an' foddered, gates shet fast,
Tools cleaned aginst to-morrer, supper past,
An' Nancy darnin' by her ker'sene lamp,--
I love, I say, to start upon a tramp,
To shake the kinkles out o' back an' legs,
An' kind o' rack my life off from the dregs
Thet's apt to settle in the buttery-hutch
Of folks thet foller in one rut too much:
Hard work is good an' wholesome, past all doubt;
But 't ain't so, ef the mind gits tuckered out.

Now, bein' born in Middlesex, you know,
There's certin spots where I like best to go:
The Concord road, for instance, (I, for one,
Most gin'lly ollers call it _John Bull's Run._)--
The field o' Lexin'ton, where England tried
The fastest colors thet she ever dyed,--
An' Concord Bridge, thet Davis, when he came,
Found was the bee-line track to heaven an' fame,--
Ez all roads be by natur', ef your soul
Don't sneak thru shun-pikes so's to save the toll.

They're 'most too fur away, take too much time
To visit often, ef it ain't in rhyme;
But there's a walk thet's hendier, a sight,
An' suits me fust-rate of a winter's night,--
I mean the round whale's-back o' Prospect Hill.
I love to loiter there while night grows still,
An' in the twinklin' villages about,
Fust here, then there, the well-saved lights goes out,
An' nary sound but watch-dogs' false alarms,
Or muffled cock-crows from the drowsy farms,
Where some wise rooster (men act jest thet way)
Stands to't thet moon-rise is the break o' d