Ben Comee A Tale of Rogers's Rangers, 1758-59

Excerpt

CHAPTER I

BEN IS BORN IN LEXINGTON 1737—SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLFELLOWS

If you have occasion to pass through or to visit Lexington, be sure to put up at the tavern about a mile below Lexington Common on a little knoll near the main road.

In front of it stand two large elms, from one of which hangs the tavern sign. It is the best tavern in the place. You will find there good beds, good food, and a genial host. The landlord is my cousin, Colonel William Munroe, a younger brother of my old friend Edmund.

Sit with him under the trees. William will gladly tell you of the fight. Lord Percy's reënforcements met the retreating British soldiers near the tavern. Percy and Pitcairn had a consultation in the bar-room over some grog, which John Raymond mixed for them, for John took care of the tavern that day. After they departed, the soldiers entered and helped themselves freely to liquor from the barrels in the shop. Some of their officers knocked the spigots from the barrels and let the liquor run away on the floor. The drunken soldiers became furious. They fired off their guns in the house. You can still see a bullet hole in the ceiling.

William will show you the doorway where poor John Raymond, the cripple, was shot down by the soldiers, as he was trying to escape from the bar-room, and will point out the places near by, where houses were burned by the British. And as you sit with William under the trees you will see great six or eight horse teams, laden with goods from New Hampshire, lumber along heavily over the road. Stages from Keene, Leominster, Lunenburg, and other towns will dash up to the door and passengers will alight for their meals. On Saturdays and Sundays herds of cattle are driven through on their way to the Brighton cattle market. All is bustle and activity.

I was born in this old house in the year 1737. In my boyhood Lexington was a dull little village unknown to fame. But the 19th of April, 1775, made the world familiar with the name. And since the bridges, which were built over the Charles River a few years later, placed the town on the main highway between Boston and the Back Country, it is now, in this year 1812, one of the most thriving places in the county.

In my childhood we were remote from the main travelled roads. The Back Country hardly existed. People were just beginning to settle the southern part of New Hampshire, and were in constant fear of Indians. Their time was fully occupied in cutting down the forests, fighting the redskins, and raising a scanty crop for their own support. Occasionally a fur trader, driving a pack-horse laden with furs, passed through the town. The huts and log houses of the first settlers were still standing, and some of the people kept up an acquaintance and correspondence with their relatives in the old country.

My grandfather used to take me on his knee and tell me of events which happened far back in the seventeenth century. His father was a Highland lad, and during the wars between King Charles and Cromwell fought for the king in a regiment of Scotch Highlanders....