General Gage was completely overcome, and asked for a moment to go apart and think it over, which he did, returning with an air which reminded one of "Ten Nights in a Bar-Room."
"You may go, my brave boys; and be assured that if my troops molest you in the future, or anywhere else, I will overpower them and strew the Common with their corses.
"Of corse he will," said the hairy boy to the right of Whomsoever J.
Opper, who afterwards became the father of a lad who grew up to be editor of the Persiflage column of the Atlantic Monthly.
Thus the boys of America impressed General Gage with their courage and patriotism and grew up to be good men.
An expedition to Canada was fitted out the same winter, and an attack made on Quebec, in which General Montgomery was killed and Benedict Arnold showed that he was a brave soldier, no matter how the historian may have hopped on him afterwards.
The Americans should not have tried to take Canada. Canada was, as Henry Clay once said, a persimmon a trifle too high for the American pole, and it is the belief of the historian, whose tears have often wet the pages of this record, that in the future Canada will be what America is now, a free country with a national debt of her own, a flag of her own, an executive of her own, and a regular annual crisis of her own, like other nations.
In 1776 Boston was evacuated. Washington, in order to ascertain whether Lord Howe had a call to fish, cut bait, or go ashore, began to fortify Dorchester Heights, March 17, and on the following morning he was not a little surprised to note the change. As the weather was raw, and he had been in-doors a good deal during the winter, Lord Howe felt the cold very keenly. He went to the window and looked at the Americans, but he would come back chilly and ill-tempered to the fire each time. Finally he hitched up and went away to Halifax, where he had acquaintances.