Chapter 3

ISRAEL GOES TO THE WARS; AND REACHING BUNKER HILL IN TIME TO BE OF
SERVICE THERE, SOON AFTER IS FORCED TO EXTEND HIS TRAVELS ACROSS THE SEA
INTO THE ENEMY'S LAND.

Left to idle lamentations, Israel might now have planted deep furrows in
his brow. But stifling his pain, he chose rather to plough, than be
ploughed. Farming weans man from his sorrows. That tranquil pursuit
tolerates nothing but tranquil meditations. There, too, in mother earth,
you may plant and reap; not, as in other things, plant and see the
planting torn up by the roots. But if wandering in the wilderness, and
wandering upon the waters, if felling trees, and hunting, and shipwreck,
and fighting with whales, and all his other strange adventures, had not
as yet cured poor Israel of his now hopeless passion, events were at
hand for ever to drown it.

It was the year 1774. The difficulties long pending between the colonies
and England were arriving at their crisis. Hostilities were certain. The
Americans were preparing themselves. Companies were formed in most of
the New England towns, whose members, receiving the name of minute-men,
stood ready to march anywhere at a minute's warning. Israel, for the
last eight months, sojourning as a laborer on a farm in Windsor,
enrolled himself in the regiment of Colonel John Patterson of Lenox,
afterwards General Patterson.

The battle of Lexington was fought on the 18th of April, 1775; news of
it arrived in the county of Berkshire on the 20th about noon. The next
morning at sunrise, Israel swung his knapsack, shouldered his musket,
and, with Patterson's regiment, was on the march, quickstep, towards
Boston.

Like Putnam, Israel received the stirring tidings at the plough. But
although not less willing than Putnam to fly to battle at an instant's
notice, yet--only half an acre of the field remaining to be finished--he
whipped up his team and finished it. Before hastening to one duty, he
would not leave a prior one undone; and ere helping to whip the British,
for a little practice' sake, he applied the gad to his oxen. From the
field of the farmer, he rushed to that of the soldier, mingling his
blood with his sweat. While we revel in broadcloth, let us not forget
what we owe to linsey-woolsey.

With other detachments from various quarters, Israel's regiment remained
encamped for several days in the vicinity of Charlestown. On the
seventeenth of June, one thousand Americans, including the regiment of
Patterson, were set about fortifying Bunker's Hill. Working all through
the night, by dawn of the following day, the redoubt was thrown up. But
every one knows all about the battle. Suffice it, that Israel was one
of those marksmen whom Putnam harangued as touching the enemy's eyes.