'Deeds, not words,' is a good motto for all. But as I would not be
churlish, and as I have agreed, as well as the rest of my
companions, to tell my story, I will mention what few things worth
relating I can recollect.

I have no distinct consciousness, as my friend the pitcher or the
curling tongs has, of what I was before the ingenuity of man brought
me into my present form. I would only mention that all the different
materials of which I was formed must have been perfect of their
kind, or I could never have performed the duties required of me.

My first very distinct recollection is of being stood up in the way
I am standing now, with a long row of my brethren, of the same shape
and character as myself, as I supposed. This was in a large building
somewhere in England. I, like the curling tongs, was at last packed
up in a box, and brought to America, but it took a rather larger box
to take me and my friends, than it took to pack up him and his
friends, with all their thin straddle legs."

Creak went the curling tongs at this personal attack.

"We were brought to this country," continued the old musket, "by an
Englishman. Little did he think how soon we should take part against
our Fatherland, or he would have kept us at home.

One day, the elder brother of the gentleman who owned our little
friend curling tongs came into the shop where I then was, and, after
looking at all the muskets, selected me as one that he might trust.
As he paid for me, he said to the man, "This is an argument which we
shall soon have to use in defence of our liberties."