"To drum-beat and heart-beat
A soldier marches by;
There is color in his cheek,
There is courage in his eye,
Yet to drum-beat and heart-beat
In a moment he must die."

The story of Nathan Hale is the story of a short life and a brave
death. Connecticut has written his name on her Roll of Honor--the
name of a man who was executed as a spy in the War of the
Revolution. He was born in Coventry, Tolland County, on the 6th
of June, 1755. His father, Deacon Richard Hale, who, as well as
his mother, Elizabeth Strong, was descended from the earliest
settlers of Massachusetts, had moved to Coventry, Connecticut,
and had bought a large farm there. The children were brought up
strictly, as they were in all New England families in those days,
and no doubt there was plenty of hard work for them on the farm,
but, as there were ten or twelve of them, we may be sure there
was plenty of play, too.

It is said that Nathan was not a strong child at first, but grew
vigorous with outdoor life; that "he was fond of running,
leaping, wrestling, firing at a mark, throwing, lifting, playing
ball," and used to tell the girls of Coventry he could do
anything but spin. Stories told of him say that when he was older
he could "put a hand on a fence as high as his head and clear it
easily at a bound"; and that the marks of "a leap which he made
upon the Green in New Haven were long preserved and pointed out."
One of his comrades in the army wrote of him, "His bodily agility