purpose.

"I wish to be useful," he said, "and every kind of service necessary
for the public good becomes honorable by being necessary. If my
country needs a peculiar service, its claims upon me are imperious."

These patriotic words of a man willing to give up his life, if
necessary, for the good of his country silenced his brother officers.

"Good-by, Nathan!" "Don't you let the redcoats catch you!" "Good luck
to you!" "We never expect to see you again!" cried his nearest
friends in camp, as, in company with Colonel Knowlton, the young
captain rode out that same afternoon to receive his orders from
Washington himself.

[Illustration: Hale receiving his Orders from Washington]

{54} Nathan Hale was born, as were his eight brothers and his three
sisters, in an old-fashioned, two-storied house, in a little country
village of Connecticut. His father, a man of integrity, was a stanch
patriot. Instead of allowing his family to use the wool raised on his
farm, he saved it to make blankets for the Continental army. The
mother of this large family was a woman of high moral and domestic
worth, devoted to her children, for whom she sought the highest good.
It was a quiet, strict household, Puritan in its faith and its
manners, where the Bible ruled, where family prayers never failed,
nor was grace ever omitted at meals. On a Saturday night, no work was
done after sundown.

Young Nathan was a bright, active American boy. He liked his gun and
his fishing pole. He was fond of running, leaping, wrestling, and
playing ball. One of his pupils said that Hale would put his hand
upon a fence as high as his head, and clear it easily at a bound. He
liked books, and read much out of school. Like two of his brothers,
he was to be educated for the ministry. When only sixteen, he entered
Yale College, and was graduated two years before the battle of Bunker
Hill. Early in the fall of 1773, the young graduate began to teach
school, and was soon afterwards made master of a select school in New
London, in his native state.

At this time young Hale was about six feet tall, and well built. He
had a broad chest, full face, light blue eyes, fair complexion, and
light brown hair. He had a {55} large mole on his neck, just where
the knot of his cravat came. At college his friends used to joke him
about it, declaring that he was surely born to be hanged.

Such was Nathan Hale when the news of the bloodshed at Lexington
reached New London. A r