cted highly by all his acquaintances. The school in which he
taught was owned by the first gentlemen in New London, all of whom were
exceedingly gratified by Hale's skill and assiduity."

A lady of New London who was for some time an inmate of the same family
with Hale, adds her testimony:

"His capacity as a teacher was highly appreciated both by parents and
pupils. His simple and unostentatious manner of imparting right views
and feelings to less cultivated understandings was unsurpassed by any
other person I have ever known."

He was, as we see, a successful teacher, and, as we learn elsewhere, had
serious thoughts of remaining a teacher.

Unexpectedly, however, events verified the truth of the old adage, "Man
proposes, God disposes." A great historical drama was to be enacted
before the eyes of the wondering world, and events were ripening that
were to form a great epoch in history.

America was being led first to protest against the unjust exactions laid
upon its people, and then to resist the oppressions that were being
forced upon it. Gradually the idea prevailed that a taxation which might
have been acceptable, if coupled with representation in Parliament, was
absolutely intolerable without representation, and the Stamp Act in 1765
struck the first note of intense opposition. Thenceforward the political
clouds grew darker and the warning incidents multiplied.

And yet, as a people, Americans were walking as if their personal plans
lay easily in their own control. Scores of young men were fitting
themselves for ordinary callings, Nathan Hale among them. His father's
plans combining with his own appeared to be that he was to teach for a
while, and then follow his brother Enoch into the ministry. As it
proved, his days as a teacher were numbered. He was never to enter a
pulpit, though he was to utter one sentence that, graven upon bronze or
granite, will last while America lasts. He was to teach, by his last,
unpremeditated words, and by an example more potent than any other in
American history, what all generations of Americans must venerate--the
sublimity of a complete sacrifice.

Smoldering discontent on the part of the Americans, waxing stronger and
stronger for a decade, and the aggressive course of action on the part
of the British authorities, finally culminated in a sudden outbreak, as
matches applied to gunpowder; and on the 19th of April, 1775, the first
blood of the American Revolution was shed. S