The young doctor turned, walked up to the officers, and said to them
quietly:

"Which of you uttered those words."

They passed on without giving any reply. He had not long to wait for a
proof that his countrymen would fight. April nineteenth, 1775, word was
brought to him by a special messenger of the events which had occurred
on the village green at Lexington. He called to his assistant, told him
to take care of his patients, mounted his horse, and rode toward the
scene of action.

"Keep up a brave heart!" he cried to a friend in passing. "They have
begun it. _That_ either party can do. And we will end it.
_That_ only one can do."

Riding fast, he was soon in the thick of the melee, and kept so close to
the point of contact that a British musket ball struck a pin out of his
hair close to one of his ears. Wherever the danger was greatest there
was Warren, now a soldier joining in the fight, now a surgeon binding up
wounds, now a citizen cheering on his fellows. From this day he made up
his mind to perform his part in the coming contest as a soldier, not as
a physician, nor in any civil capacity; and accordingly on the
fourteenth of June, 1775, the Massachusetts legislature elected him
"second Major General of the Massachusetts army." Before he had received
his commission occurred the battle of Bunker Hill, June seventeenth. He
passed the night previous in public service, for he was President of the
Provincial Congress, but, on the seventeenth, when the congress met at
Watertown, the president did not appear. Members knew where he was, for