II.

Into the West they turn, beyond the flow
Of the broad waters that shall never brim
On one shore bond and on the other free.
Both shall be free! men's eyes were never touched
With clearer vision, looked with larger hope.
East land and West and North and South shall bless
This pilgrimage; God shall take up the prayers
That breathe upon this parting, fold them close
Into His bosom, keep them night and day,
And happier summers blooming in the land
Shall know how they were guided and came home.
A new home now! "free-soil, free speech, free men"
Shall hallow it, make small the cost to those
Who look and find the alien landscape strange.
Field-flower and level harvest of the plain
And river-valley's tillage and nurtured slope
Of dipping hills of Kansas shall come forth
And gather up with them a noble story,
A lengthening honor and a fragrant fame.

Hear now the voice that speaks to those who go
For Freedom's sake to keep the balance fast;
Beecher stands up, his mighty tone sounds forth,
Silliman speaks, "To arm in self-defense
Becomes at such a time a sacred duty."
Dutton, within whose tabernacle rise
The benedictions of the time, speaks out,
Proclaiming arms as holy as the Word
Bestows them, trusting God would have it so.

And she whose son fell first upon the field
That followed fast upon the whirling days
And bleeding cries of Kansas-she is here;
Yale, in whose cherishing halls there rise again
As if with visible form and solemn brow,

The mighty of old time in Liberty,

Pointing the measure of the hour's grim need,

High counsellors of the shades, spirits that speak

With never-dying voices of the past.

"This is the Way, the Time, this shall endure."

Westward! there breathe forever from that name
Strange airs of glory and of far romance,
Escape and new awakenings, proof of heart
And mighty sinew and the dust of things
Cast down and trampled over and put by.
Westward! there is a sound forevermore
Within it of new covenants and cries
Of bitter travail and of faithful days,
Out of it is a tang of ocean blown,

Of sea-spray and lashed foam and barren sands,
There is a vision in it of a land

Piercing the shadows with baptismal brows,
Washed with cool streams of mercy, filled with rest
Under wide skies of peace and kindlier stars
After earth's troubled fevers and vain dreams.

The severance of this hour may bring alike
For those who go and those who say "Farewell,"
Remembrance of a time gone by, no less
Than Pilgrims of an older day are these
Who fare to a far country, bringing in
Justice of men, Valor and Word of God.

In the Pageant the meeting in North Church and the setting out of the Kansas settlers will be played amid a typical setting of the period, as though the rest of the life of New Haven were passing and repassing across the Green. Families in the somewhat pompous dress of the time meet and discuss the situation. The procession of a girl's school goes by attended by two prim mistresses. Small children are playing at games. Students stroll hither and thither. Ladies in barouches, their faces sheltered from the sun by the tiny parasols of the time, pass each other with cordial but correct recognition.

SCENE IV

THE DEATH OF THEODORE WINTHROP

By

EDWIN OVIATT

Let me not waste in skirmishes my power,—
In petty struggles,—rather in the hour

Of deadly conflict may I nobly die!

In my first battle perish gloriously!

(From Waiting, a poem by Theodore Winthrop of the Yale College Class of 1848, written in 1851.)

Theodore Winthrop wrote these prophetic lines when he was twenty-two years old and beginning a literary career that had much promise of distinction. Ten years later he was to fall,—the first Yale man and, I believe, the first Union officer to be killed in the Civil War,-leading a forlorn hope against a Southern battery at Great Bethal. Poet, novelist, and war correspondent for James Russell Lowell's infant Atlantic Monthly, this young Yale graduate gave his life to his country in almost the first battle of the war.

Fort Sumter's guns had just boomed forth the answer of the North to the opening act of the disaffected Southerners. President Lincoln had issued his first ringing call for volunteers to uphold the threatened Union. The whole North was looking toward the Potomac, complacently and with an easy lightness of thought that little anticipated the deluge of blood that was to follow before the question thus raised was to be settled. Regiments were forming and entraining for the brief term of service

that everybody was agreed would be sufficient to put down the insurrection. Through the streets of New York, hung with flags and bunting for the occasion, the gallant Seventh gaily marched to stop the uprising in a month's excursion on Virginian soil. A novice at arms, young Winthrop, then but thirty-two years old, dropped his pen and marched off with them as a private soldier, writing to his uncle in the breezy way of these first volunteers, that he was off "to free the slaves." A month later, and he had stayed behind when the Seventh returned, to become the volunteer Military Secretary to General Ben Butler, then commanding the Department of Virginia.

Young Winthrop had said to his mother, as he left their home on Staten Island for the front, "I do not take this step lightly." Throughout his previous literary work there had run a vigorous thread of pent-up nervous force, and his letters from Fortress Monroe, where he was now quartered, show his keen relish for adventure and aggressive action. General Butler having conceived the idea of a sudden attack on some Confederate troops entrenched a few miles away at Bethal, the young Yale aide threw himself with great energy into the plan, and prepared himself to take part in it. Writing to his mother on June 9th, he had said: "We march to-night in two detachments, to endeavor to surround and capture a detachment of the Secession Army, estimated at from three or four hundred to twenty-five hundred. If we find them where we expect, we shall bag some. If I come back safe I will send you my notes of the Plan of Attack. . . . We march at midnight."

These were young Major Theodore Winthrop's last written words. At midnight on the ninth of June, 1861, the two columns of Northern troops left Fortress Monroe for Bethal. The plan of attack was a good one, so military students have always said. Winthrop himself, working with General Butler, had drawn it up, to the smallest details. It was to have been a surprise through two columns simultaneously rushing the Southern battery entrenched across a small stream at Great Bethal. It should have succeeded. Winthrop, ranking as a Major on Butler's staff,