[Pamphlets. American history]

CAMBRIDGE REVOLUTIONARY MEMORIAL. 35
zation. There were leaders ahd followers. Lord
Percy said "he never saw any thing equal to the
intrepidity of the minute-men." There was skill in
the leaders which carried the courage to a successful
issue. The British fought that day, especially on
their retreat, not alone against actual men, but against
imaginary enemies. Men seemed to drop fiom the
clouds. Any peaceful stone-wall might be a fortress,
and the quiet grove mask a battery. One old grayheaded man of Woburn figures in the stories of the
time, who rode a fine white horse after the flying.
troops, and dismounting within gunshot would send
his sure bullet to the mark. When he fired, a man
fell. They came to cry at sight of him, "Look out,
there is the man on the white horse!" Even the multitudes of the old and infirm, of women and children,
looking down from the hillsides, were transformed
to their frightened imagination into hosts of armed
men threatening their extinction. Amid the unknown
terrors which beset these strangers in a strange land,
with lurking foes on every side, with all the country
pouring its forces against them, it is hardly strange
that they lost hope and daring, and fled in panic and
alarm.
This day would have been memorable in itself;
but it has justly attained a wider and higher renown
because it opened the War of the Revolution. Purposes had passed into deeds. Both patriots and
invaders had gone too far to recede and leave things
as they had been. Blood had been shed. A spirit
had been evoked which could not be put down. The