Ticonderoga,--up-hill and down-hill for six miles, white houses
and dark, churches and shops, and playing children and loungers,
and mills, and rough banks and haggard woods, just like any other
somewhat straggling country village. O no! O no! There are
few like this. _I_ have seen no other. Churches and shops and
all the paraphernalia of busy, bustling common life there may be,
but we have no eyes for such. Yonder on the green high plain
which we have already entered is a simple guide-post, guiding you,
not on to Canada, to New York, to Boston, but back into the dead
century that lived so fiercely and lies so still. We stand on
ground over-fought by hosts of heroes. Here rise still the
breastworks, grass-grown and harmless now, behind which men awaited
bravely the shock of furious onset, before which men rushed as
bravely to duty and to death. Slowly we wind among the little
squares of intrenchments, whose deadliest occupants now are peaceful
cows and sheep, slowly among tall trees,--ghouls that thrust out
their slimy, cold fingers everywhere, battening on horrid
banquets,--nay, sorrowful trees, not so. Your gentle, verdant
vigor nourishes no lust of blood. Rather you sprang in pity
from the cold ashes at your feet, that every breeze quivering
through your mournful leaves may harp a requiem for Polydorus.
Alighting at the landing-place we stroll up the hill and among
the ruins of the old forts, and breast ourselves the surging
battle-tide. For war is not to this generation what it has
been. The rust of long disuse has been rubbed off by the iron
hand of fate,--shall we not say, rather, by the good hand of
our God upon us?--and the awful word stands forth once more,
red-lettered and real. Marathon, Waterloo, Lexington, are no
longer the conflict of numbers against numbers, nor merely of
principles against principles, but of men against men. And as