by a few fragmentary descriptions of Hale's personal appearance.
His object has been to represent an American youth of the period, an
American patriot and scholar, whose manly beauty and grace tradition
loves to recall, to represent in face and in bearing the moral elevation
of character that made him conspicuous among his fellows, and to show
forth, if possible, the deed that made him immortal. For it is the deed
and the memorable last words we think of when we think of Hale. I know
that by one of the canons of art it is held that sculpture should rarely
fix a momentary action; but if this can be pardoned in the Laocoon, where
suffering could not otherwise be depicted to excite the sympathy of the
spectator, surely it can be justified in this case, where, as one may
say, the immortality of the subject rests upon a single act, upon a
phrase, upon the attitude of the moment. For all the man's life, all his
character, flowered and blossomed into immortal beauty in this one
supreme moment of self-sacrifice, triumph, defiance. The ladder of the
gallows-tree on which the deserted boy stood, amidst the enemies of his
country, when he uttered those last words which all human annals do not
parallel in simple patriotism,--the ladder I am sure ran up to heaven,
and if angels were not seen ascending and descending it in that gray
morning, there stood the embodiment of American courage, unconquerable,
American faith, invincible, American love of country, unquenchable, a new
democratic manhood in the world, visible there for all men to take note
of, crowned already with the halo of victory in the Revolutionary dawn.
Oh, my Lord Howe! it seemed a trifling incident to you and to your
bloodhound, Provost Marshal Cunningham, but those winged last words were
worth ten thousand men to the drooping patriot army. Oh, your Majesty,
King George the Third! here was a spirit, could you but have known it,
that would cost you an empire, here was an ignominious death that would
grow in the estimation of mankind, increasing in nobility above the
fading pageantry of kings.

On the 21st of April, 1775, a messenger, riding express from Boston to
New York with the tidings of Lexington and Concord, reached New London.
The news created intense excitement. A public meeting was called in the
court-house at twilight, and among the speakers who exhorted the people
to take up arms at once, was one, a youth not yet twenty years of age,
who said, "Let us march i