Robert W. Chambers
The Reckoning
Published by Good Press, 2019
EAN 4057664567048
Table of Contents
TO MY FRIEND
J. HAMBLEN SEARS
WHOSE UNSELFISH FRIENDSHIP AND SOUND ADVICE
I ACKNOWLEDGE IN THIS
DEDICATION
I
His muscle to the ax and plow,
His calm eye to the rifle sight,
Or at his country's beck and bow,
Setting the fiery cross alight,
Or, in the city's pageantry,
Serving the Cause in secrecy—
Behold him now, haranguing kings
While through the shallow court there rings
The light laugh of the courtezan;
This the New Yorker, this the Man!
II
Standing upon his blackened land,
He saw the flames mount up to God,
He saw the death tracks in the sand,
And the dead children on the sod,
He saw the half-charred door, unbarred,
The dying hound he left on guard,
And that still thing he once had wed
Sprawled on the threshold dripping red:
Dry-eyed he primed his rifle pan;
This the New Yorker, this the Man!
III
He plowed the graveyard of his dead
And sowed the grain to feed a host;
In silent lands untenanted
Save by the Sachems' painted ghost
He set the ensign of the sun;
A thousand axes rang as one
In the black forest's falling roar,
And through the glade the plowshare tore
Like God's own blade in Freedom's van;
This the New Yorker, and the Man!
R. W. C.
PROLOGUE
ECHOES OF YESTERDAY
His Excellency's system of intelligence in the City of New York I never pretended to comprehend. That I was one of many agents I could have no doubt; yet as long as I remained there I never knew but three or four established spies with residence in town. Although I had no illusions concerning Mr. Gaine and his "Gazette," at intervals I violently suspected Mr. Rivington of friendliness to us, and this in spite of his Tory newspaper and the fierce broadsides he fired at rebels and rebellion. But I must confess that in my long and amiable acquaintance with the gentleman he never, by word or hint or inference, so much as by the quiver of an eyelash, corroborated my suspicion, and to this day I do not know whether or not Mr. Rivington furnished secret information to his Excellency while publicly in print he raged and sneered.
Itinerant spies were always in the city in spite of the deadly watch kept up by regular and partizan, and sometimes they bore messages for me, the words "Pro Gloria" establishing their credentials as well as mine. They entered the city in all guises and under all pretexts, some as refugees, some as traitors, some wearing the uniform of Tory partizan corps, others attired as tradesmen, farmers, fishermen, and often bearing passes, too, though where they contrived to find passes I never understood.
It was a time of sullenness and quick suspicion; few were free from doubt, but of those few I made one—until that day when my enemy arrived—but of that in its place, for now I mean to say a word about this city that I love—that we all love, understanding how alone she stood in seven years' chains, yet dauntless, dangerous, and defiant.
For upon New York fell the brunt of British wrath, and the judgment of God fell, too, passing twice in fire that laid one-quarter of the town in cinders. Nor was that enough, for His lightning smote the powder-ship, the Morning Star, where she swung at her moorings off from Burling Slip, and the very sky seemed falling in the thunder that shook the shoreward houses into ruins.
I think that, take it all in all, New York met and withstood every separate horror that war can bring, save actual assault and sack. Greater hardships fell to the lot of no other city in America, for we lost more than a half of our population, more than a fourth of the city by the two great fires. Want, with the rich, meant famine for the poor and sad privation for the well-to-do; smallpox and typhus swept us; commerce by water died, and slowly our loneliness became a maddening isolation, when his Excellency flung out