ploughed. Farming weans man from his sorrows. That tranquil pursuit
tolerates nothing but tranquil meditations. There, too, in mother earth,
you may plant and reap; not, as in other things, plant and see the
planting torn up by the roots. But if wandering in the wilderness, and
wandering upon the waters, if felling trees, and hunting, and shipwreck,
and fighting with whales, and all his other strange adventures, had not
as yet cured poor Israel of his now hopeless passion, events were at
hand for ever to drown it.

It was the year 1774. The difficulties long pending between the colonies
and England were arriving at their crisis. Hostilities were certain. The
Americans were preparing themselves. Companies were formed in most of
the New England towns, whose members, receiving the name of minute-men,
stood ready to march anywhere at a minute's warning. Israel, for the
last eight months, sojourning as a laborer on a farm in Windsor,
enrolled himself in the regiment of Colonel John Patterson of Lenox,
afterwards General Patterson.

The battle of Lexington was fought on the 18th of April, 1775; news of
it arrived in the county of Berkshire on the 20th about noon. The next
morning at sunrise, Israel swung his knapsack, shouldered his musket,
and, with Patterson's regiment, was on the march, quickstep, towards
Boston.

Like Putnam, Israel received the stirring tidings at the plough. But
although not less willing than Putnam to fly to battle at an instant's
notice, yet--only half an acre of the field remaining to be finished--he
whipped up his team and finished it. Before hastening to one duty, he
would not leave a prior one undone; and ere helping to whip the British,
for a little practice' sake, he applied the gad to his oxen. From the