To think that he had had the vanity to imagine the crowd pursued him, and so has flown from his own friends to the statue of King George for safety!
"I won't tell," thinks the lad, "a word about this to anyone at home," and then he falls to pushing the men who are pushing the statue, and over it topples, horse and rider, down upon the sod of the little United States, just five days old.
How they hew it! How they hack it! How they saw at it with saw and penknife! Blue-Eyed Boy himself cuts off the king's ear, that will not hear the petitions of people or Congress, proudly pockets it, and walks off, thankful because he carries his own on his head.
Would you like to know what General Washington thought about the overthrow of the statue in Bowling Green?
We will turn to Phineas Porter's orderly-book, and copy from the general orders for July 10, 1776, what he said to the soldiers about it:
"The General doubts not the persons who pulled down and mutilated the statue in the Broad-way last night were actuated by zeal in the public cause, yet it has so much the appearance of riot and want of order in the army, that he disapproves the manner and directs that in future such things shall be avoided by the soldiers, and be left to be executed by proper authority."
The same morning, the heavy ear of the king in his pocket, Blue-Eyed Boy, once more on his pony, sets off to cross the ferry on his way to Philadelphia. We leave him caught in the mazes of the Flying Camp gathering at Amboy; whither by day and by night have been ferried over from Staten Island, all the flocks of sheep and herds of cattle that could be gotten away--lest the hungry men in red coats, coming up the bay, seize upon and destroy them.
Ah! what days, what days and nights too were those for the young United States to pass through!
To-day, we echo what somebody wrote somewhere, even then, amid all the darkness--words we would gladly see on our banner's top-most fold:
"The United States! Bounded by the ocean and backed by the forest. Whom hath she to fear but her God?"
Fourth of July, 1776.--Troublous times, that day? Valentine Kull thought so, as he stood in a barn-yard, with a portion of his mother's clothes line tied as tightly as he dared to tie it around the neck of a calf. He was waiting for the bars to be let down by his sister. Anna Kull thought the times decidedly troublous, as she pulled and pushed and lifted to get the bars down.