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Who would recognize classic Menotomy in the tinsel ring of Arlington? The good old Indian name, the very speaking of which is a pleasure, has given place to the first-class apartments, steam-heated, electric-lights, hot and cold water, all improvements in appellations of Arlington and Arlington Heights.
Suddenly the rider in the field disappears, going head foremost into a clay pit. "Ha! ha!" laughs Revere, as the fleet steed bears him on towards Medford town. He clatters across Mystic bridge, halts long enough to awaken the captain of the minute-men, and then rattles on towards Menotomy. When I got near them I discovered they were British officers.
Then through West Medford and over the Mystic Bridge to Menotomy, now Arlington, where he struck the highway, now Massachusetts Avenue, to Lexington. Galloping up to the old Clarke house where Hancock and Adams were sleeping, the patriot on guard cautioned him not to make so much noise. "Noise! you'll have enough of it here before long. The Regulars are coming."
Roger swung his hat to welcome Captain Gideon Foster of Danvers, and his company, who had marched sixteen miles in four hours, coming upon the British at Menotomy meetinghouse. A moment later they were in the thick of the fight.
The picture of the scene of Menotomy had stamped itself into his memory. This last shot should be his best. Not now would he crouch behind a fence, a tree, or bowlder. He would confront the murderers like a man. He walked deliberately forward. He was by a farmhouse, so near the last file of soldiers which had halted to ward off the minute-men a moment, that he could see the whites of their eyes.
"We will jog on slowly; it won't do to get there too early," said one of the officers as they mounted their horses and rode up past the green, and along the wide and level highways, towards Menotomy, paying no attention to Solomon Brown, plodding homeward in his horse-cart from market.
But Peter Rugg did not reach home that night, nor the next; nor, when he became a missing man, could he ever be traced beyond Mr. Cutter's in Menotomy. For a long time after, on every dark and stormy night, the wife of Peter Rugg would fancy she heard the crack of a whip, and the fleet tread of a horse, and the rattling of a carriage, passing her door.
A tablet marks the spot where on April 19 "the old men of Menotomy" captured a convoy of British soldiers. Poor old men, once the boast and glory of the place that knew you; but now the passing traveller curiously reads the inscription and wonders "Why were they called the old men 'of Menotomy'?" for there is now no such place.
He reached Medford, and roused the captain of the minute men; then, hastening on through Menotomy, now Arlington, and thence to Lexington, he "alarmed almost every house." He reached Lexington about midnight, and went directly to the house of the Reverend Jonas Clark, where Hancock and Adams were sleeping under a guard of the militia.
One tried to get ahead of me, and the other to take me. I turned my horse quick and galloped towards Charlestown Neck, and then pushed for the Medford road. The one who chased me, endeavoring to cut me off, got into a clay pond. I got clear of him and went through Medford over the bridge up to Menotomy.
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