📘🎥Friday's Film Adaptation🎥📘: The Devil's Disciple by George Bernard Shaw

Summary:

Dick Dudgeon is an outcast from his family in colonial Websterbridge, New Hampshire. He returns their hatred with scorn. After the death of his father, Dick returns to his childhood home to hear the reading of his father's will, much to his family's dismay. Anthony Anderson, the local minister, treats him with courtesy despite Dick's self-proclaimed apostasy, but Dick's "wickedness" appalls Anderson's wife Judith. To everyone's surprise, it is revealed that Dick's father secretly changed his will just before he died, leaving the bulk of his estate to Dick.

ACT I 

At the most wretched hour between a black night and a wintry morning in the year 1777, MRS. DUDGEON, of New Hampshire, is sitting up in the kitchen and general dwelling room of her farm house on the outskirts of the town of Websterbridge. She is not a prepossessing woman. No woman looks her best after sitting up all night; and MRS. DUDGEON's face, even at its best, is grimly trenched by the channels into which the barren forms and observances of a dead Puritanism can pen a bitter temper and a fierce pride. She is an elderly matron who has worked hard and got nothing by it except dominion and detestation in her sordid home, and an unquestioned reputation for piety and respectability among her neighbors, to whom drink and debauchery are still so much more tempting than religion and rectitude, that they conceive goodness simply as self-denial. This conception is easily extended to others—denial, and finally generalized as covering anything disagreeable. So MRS. DUDGEON, being exceedingly disagreeable, is held to be exceedingly good. Short of flat felony, she enjoys complete license except for amiable weaknesses of any sort, and is consequently, without knowing it, the most licentious woman in the parish on the strength of never having broken the seventh commandment or missed a Sunday at the Presbyterian church. 

The year 1777 is the one in which the passions roused of the breaking off of the American colonies from England, more by their own weight than their own will, boiled up to shooting point, the shooting being idealized to the English mind as suppression of rebellion and maintenance of British dominion, and to the American as defence of liberty, resistance to tyranny, and self-sacrifice on the altar of the Rights of Man. Into the merits of these idealizations it is not here necessary to inquire: suffice it to say, without prejudice, that they have convinced both Americans and English that the most high minded course for them to pursue is to kill as many of one another as possible, and that military operations to that end are in full swing, morally supported by confident requests from the clergy of both sides for the blessing of God on their arms. 

Under such circumstances many other women besides this disagreeable MRS. DUDGEON find themselves sitting up all night waiting for news. Like her, too, they fall asleep towards morning at the risk of nodding themselves into the kitchen fire. MRS. DUDGEON sleeps with a shawl over her head, and her feet on a broad fender of iron laths, the step of the domestic altar of the fireplace, with its huge hobs and boiler, and its hinged arm above the smoky mantel-shelf for roasting. The plain kitchen table is opposite the fire, at her elbow, with a candle on it in a tin sconce. Her chair, like all the others in the room, is uncushioned and unpainted; but as it has a round railed back and a seat conventionally moulded to the sitter's curves, it is comparatively a chair of state. The room has three doors, one on the same side as the fireplace, near the corner, leading to the best bedroom; one, at the opposite end of the opposite wall, leading to the scullery and washhouse; and the house door, with its latch, heavy lock, and clumsy wooden bar, in the front wall, between the window in its middle and the corner next the bedroom door. Between the door and the window a rack of pegs suggests to the deductive observer that the men of the house are all away, as there are no hats or coats on them. On the other side of the window the clock hangs on a nail, with its white wooden dial, black iron weights, and brass pendulum. Between the clock and the corner, a big cupboard, locked, stands on a dwarf dresser full of common crockery. 

On the side opposite the fireplace, between the door and the corner, a shamelessly ugly black horsehair sofa stands against the wall. An inspection of its stridulous surface shows that MRS. DUDGEON is not alone. A girl of sixteen or seventeen has fallen asleep on it. She is a wild, timid looking creature with black hair and tanned skin. Her frock, a scanty garment, is rent, weatherstained, berrystained, and by no means scrupulously clean. It hangs on her with a freedom which, taken with her brown legs and bare feet, suggests no great stock of underclothing.

Suddenly there comes a tapping at the door, not loud enough to wake the sleepers. Then knocking, which disturbs MRS. DUDGEON a little. Finally the latch is tried, whereupon she springs up at once.

 

MRS. DUDGEON. [threateningly]. Well, why don't you open the door? [She sees that the girl is asleep and immediately raises a clamor of heartfelt vexation.] Well, dear, dear me! Now this is—[shaking her] wake up, wake up: do you hear? 

THE GIRL. [sitting up]. What is it? 

MRS. DUDGEON. Wake up; and be ashamed of yourself, you unfeeling sinful girl, falling asleep like that, and your father hardly cold in his grave. 

THE GIRL. [half asleep still]. I didn't mean to. I dropped off— 

MRS. DUDGEON. [cutting her short]. Oh yes, you've plenty of excuses, I daresay. Dropped off! [Fiercely, as the knocking recommences.] Why don't you get up and let your uncle in? after me waiting up all night for him! [She pushes her rudely off the sofa.] There: I'll open the door: much good you are to wait up. Go and mend that fire a bit. 

The girl, cowed and wretched, goes to the fire and puts a log on. MRS. DUDGEON unbars the door and opens it, letting into the stuffy kitchen a little of the freshness and a great deal of the chill of the dawn, also her second son CHRISTY, a fattish, stupid, fair-haired, round-faced man of about 22, muffled in a plaid shawl and grey overcoat. He hurries, shivering, to the fire, leaving MRS. DUDGEON to shut the door.

CHRISTY. [at the fire]. F—f—f! but it is cold. [Seeing the girl, and staring lumpishly at her.] Why, who are you? 

THE GIRL. [shyly]. Essie. 

MRS. DUDGEON. Oh you may well ask. [To ESSIE.] Go to your room, child, and lie down since you haven't feeling enough to keep you awake. Your history isn't fit for your own ears to hear. 

ESSIE. I— 

MRS. DUDGEON. [peremptorily]. Don't answer me, Miss; but show your obedience by doing what I tell you. [ESSIE, almost in tears, crosses the room to the door near the sofa.] And don't forget your prayers. [ESSIE goes out.] She'd have gone to bed last night just as if nothing had happened if I'd let her. 

CHRISTY. [phlegmatically]. Well, she can't be expected to feel Uncle Peter's death like one of the family. 

MRS. DUDGEON. What are you talking about, child? Isn't she his daughter—the punishment of his wickedness and shame? [She assaults her chair by sitting down.] 

CHRISTY. [staring]. Uncle Peter's daughter! 

MRS. DUDGEON. Why else should she be here? D'ye think I've not had enough trouble and care put upon me bringing up my own girls, let alone you and your good-for-nothing brother, without having your uncle's bastards— 

CHRISTY. [interrupting her with an apprehensive glance at the door by which ESSIE went out]. Sh! She may hear you.

MRS. DUDGEON. [raising her voice]. Let her hear me. People who fear God don't fear to give the devil's work its right name. [CHRISTY, soullessly indifferent to the strife of Good and Evil, stares at the fire, warming himself.] Well, how long are you going to stare there like a stuck pig? What news have you for me? 

CHRISTY. [taking off his hat and shawl and going to the rack to hang them up]. The minister is to break the news to you. He'll be here presently. 

MRS. DUDGEON. Break what news? 

CHRISTY. [standing on tiptoe, from boyish habit, to hang his hat up, though he is quite tall enough to reach the peg, and speaking with callous placidity, considering the nature of the announcement]. Father's dead too.

 

MRS. DUDGEON. [stupent]. Your father! 

CHRISTY. [sulkily, coming back to the fire and warming himself again, attending much more to the fire than to his mother]. Well, it's not my fault. When we got to Nevinstown we found him ill in bed. He didn't know us at first. The minister sat up with him and sent me away. He died in the night. 

MRS. DUDGEON. [bursting into dry angry tears]. Well, I do think this is hard on me—very hard on me. His brother, that was a disgrace to us all his life, gets hanged on the public gallows as a rebel; and your father, instead of staying at home where his duty was, with his own family, goes after him and dies, leaving everything on my shoulders. After sending this girl to me to take care of, too! [She plucks her shawl vexedly over her ears.] It's sinful, so it is; downright sinful. 

CHRISTY. [with a slow, bovine cheerfulness, after a pause]. I think it's going to be a fine morning, after all.

MRS. DUDGEON. [railing at him]. A fine morning! And your father newly dead! Where's your feelings, child? 

CHRISTY. [obstinately]. Well, I didn't mean any harm. I suppose a man may make a remark about the weather even if his father's dead. 

MRS. DUDGEON. [bitterly]. A nice comfort my children are to me! One son a fool, and the other a lost sinner that's left his home to live with smugglers and gypsies and villains, the scum of the earth! 

Someone knocks. 

CHRISTY. [without moving]. That's the minister. 

MRS. DUDGEON. [sharply]. Well, aren't you going to let Mr. Anderson in? 

CHRISTY goes sheepishly to the door. 

MRS. DUDGEON buries her face in her hands, as it is her duty as a widow to be overcome with grief. 

CHRISTY opens the door, and admits the minister, ANTHONY ANDERSON, a shrewd, genial, ready Presbyterian divine of about 50, with something of the authority of his profession in his bearing. But it is an altogether secular authority, sweetened by a conciliatory, sensible manner not at all suggestive of a quite thoroughgoing other-worldliness. He is a strong, healthy man, too, with a thick, sanguine neck; and his keen, cheerful mouth cuts into somewhat fleshy corners. No doubt an excellent parson, but still a man capable of making the most of this world, and perhaps a little apologetically conscious of getting on better with it than a sound Presbyterian ought. 

ANDERSON. [to CHRISTY, at the door, looking at MRS. DUDGEON whilst he takes off his cloak]. Have you told her?

CHRISTY. She made me. [He shuts the door; yawns; and loafs across to the sofa where he sits down and presently drops off to sleep.] 

ANDERSON looks compassionately at MRS. DUDGEON. Then he hangs his cloak and hat on the rack. 

MRS. DUDGEON dries her eyes and looks up at him. 

ANDERSON. Sister: the Lord has laid his hand very heavily upon you. 

MRS. DUDGEON. [with intensely recalcitrant resignation]. It's His will, I suppose; and I must bow to it. But I do think it hard. What call had Timothy to go to Springtown, and remind everybody that he belonged to a man that was being hanged?—and [spitefully] that deserved it, if ever a man did. 

ANDERSON. [gently]. They were brothers, Mrs. Dudgeon. 

MRS. DUDGEON. Timothy never acknowledged him as his brother after we were married: he had too much respect for me to insult me with such a brother. Would such a selfish wretch as Peter have come thirty miles to see Timothy hanged, do you think? Not thirty yards, not he. However, I must bear my cross as best I may: least said is soonest mended. 

ANDERSON. [very grave, coming down to the fire to stand with his back to it]. Your eldest son was present at the execution, Mrs. Dudgeon. 

MRS. DUDGEON. [disagreeably surprised]. Richard? 

ANDERSON. [nodding]. Yes. 

MRS. DUDGEON. [vindictively]. Let it be a warning to him. He may end that way himself, the wicked, dissolute, godless—[she suddenly stops; her voice fails; and she asks, with evident dread] Did Timothy see him?

ANDERSON. Yes. 

MRS. DUDGEON. [holding her breath]. Well? 

ANDERSON. He only saw him in the crowd: they did not speak. [MRS. DUDGEON, greatly relieved, exhales the pent up breath and sits at her ease again.] Your husband was greatly touched and impressed by his brother's awful death. [MRS. DUDGEON sneers. ANDERSON breaks off to demand with some indignation] Well, wasn't it only natural, Mrs. Dudgeon? He softened towards his prodigal son in that moment. He sent for him to come to see him. 

MRS. DUDGEON. [her alarm renewed]. Sent for Richard! 

ANDERSON. Yes; but Richard would not come. He sent his father a message; but I'm sorry to say it was a wicked message—an awful message. 

MRS. DUDGEON. What was it? 

ANDERSON. That he would stand by his wicked uncle, and stand against his good parents, in this world and the next. 

MRS. DUDGEON. [implacably]. He will be punished for it. He will be punished for it—in both worlds. 

ANDERSON. That is not in our hands, Mrs. Dudgeon. 

MRS. DUDGEON. Did I say it was, Mr. Anderson. We are told that the wicked shall be punished. Why should we do our duty and keep God's law if there is to be no difference made between us and those who follow their own likings and dislikings, and make a jest of us and of their Maker's word? 

ANDERSON. Well, Richard's earthly father has been merciful and his heavenly judge is the father of us all.

MRS. DUDGEON. [forgetting herself]. Richard's earthly father was a softheaded— 

ANDERSON. [shocked]. Oh! 

MRS. DUDGEON. [with a touch of shame].  Well, I am Richard's mother. If I am against him who has any right to be for him? [Trying to conciliate him.] Won't you sit down, Mr. Anderson? I should have asked you before; but I'm so troubled. 

ANDERSON. Thank you—[He takes a chair from beside the fireplace, and turns it so that he can sit comfortably at the fire. When he is seated he adds, in the tone of a man who knows that he is opening a difficult subject.] Has Christy told you about the new will? 

MRS. DUDGEON. [all her fears returning]. The new will! Did Timothy—? [She breaks off, gasping, unable to complete the question.] 

ANDERSON. Yes. In his last hours he changed his mind. 

MRS. DUDGEON. [white with intense rage]. And you let him rob me? 

ANDERSON. I had no power to prevent him giving what was his to his own son. 

MRS. DUDGEON. He had nothing of his own. His money was the money I brought him as my marriage portion. It was for me to deal with my own money and my own son. He dare not have done it if I had been with him; and well he knew it. That was why he stole away like a thief to take advantage of the law to rob me by making a new will behind my back. The more shame on you, Mr. Anderson,—you, a minister of the gospel—to act as his accomplice in such a crime. 

ANDERSON. [rising]. I will take no offence at what you say in the first bitterness of your grief. 

MRS. DUDGEON. [contemptuously]. Grief!

ANDERSON. Well, of your disappointment, if you can find it in your heart to think that the better word. 

MRS. DUDGEON. My heart! My heart! And since when, pray, have you begun to hold up our hearts as trustworthy guides for us? 

ANDERSON. [rather guiltily]. I—er— 

MRS. DUDGEON. [vehemently]. Don't lie, Mr. Anderson. We are told that the heart of man is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked. My heart belonged, not to Timothy, but to that poor wretched brother of his that has just ended his days with a rope round his neck—aye, to Peter Dudgeon. You know it: old Eli Hawkins, the man to whose pulpit you succeeded, though you are not worthy to loose his shoe latchet, told it you when he gave over our souls into your charge. He warned me and strengthened me against my heart, and made me marry a God-fearing man—as he thought. What else but that discipline has made me the woman I am? And you, you who followed your heart in your marriage, you talk to me of what I find in my heart. Go home to your pretty wife, man; and leave me to my prayers. [She turns from him and leans with her elbows on the table, brooding over her wrongs and taking no further notice of him.] 

ANDERSON. [willing enough to escape]. The Lord forbid that I should come between you and the source of all comfort! [He goes to the rack for his coat and hat.] 

MRS. DUDGEON. [without looking at him]. The Lord will know what to forbid and what to allow without your help. 

ANDERSON. And whom to forgive, I hope—Eli Hawkins and myself, if we have ever set up our preaching against His law. [He fastens his cloak, and is now ready to go.] Just one word—on necessary business, Mrs. Dudgeon. There is the reading of the will to be gone through; and Richard has a right to be present. He is in the town; but he has the grace to say that he does not want to force himself in here. 

MRS. DUDGEON. He shall come here. Does he expect us to leave his father's house for his convenience? Let them all come, and come quickly, and go quickly. They shall not make the will an excuse to shirk half their day's work. I shall be ready, never fear. 

ANDERSON. [coming back a step or two]. Mrs. Dudgeon: I used to have some little influence with you. When did I lose it? 

MRS. DUDGEON. [still without turning to him]. When you married for love. Now you're answered. 

ANDERSON. Yes: I am answered. [He goes out, musing.] 

MRS. DUDGEON. [to herself, thinking of her husband]. Thief! Thief!! [She shakes herself angrily out of the chair; throws back the shawl from her head; and sets to work to prepare the room for the reading of the will, beginning by replacing ANDERSON's chair against the wall, and pushing back her own to the window. Then she calls, in her hard, driving, wrathful way] Christy. [No answer: he is fast asleep.] Christy. [She shakes him roughly.] Get up out of that; and be ashamed of yourself—sleeping, and your father dead! [She returns to the table; puts the candle on the mantelshelf; and takes from the table drawer a red table cloth which she spreads.]

A preacher and a rebel leader change places during the Revolution.

Release Date: August 20, 1959

Release Time: 83 minutes

Director: Guy Hamilton

Cast:

Burt Lancaster as Reverend Anthony Anderson

Kirk Douglas as Richard "Dick" Dudgeon

Laurence Olivier as General John Burgoyne

Janette Scott as Judith Anderson

Eva Le Gallienne as Mrs. Dudgeon

Harry Andrews as Major Swindon

Basil Sydney as Lawyer Hawkins

George Rose as British sergeant

Neil McCallum as Christopher (Christie) Dudgeon

Mervyn Johns as Reverend Maindeck Parshotter

David Horne as Uncle William

Erik Chitty as Uncle Titus

Allan Cuthbertson as British captain

Percy Herbert as British lieutenant

Phyllis Morris as Wife of Titus

Brian Oulton as Chaplain Brudenell

Jenny Jones as Essie

Sheree Winton as Platinum Blond

Steven Berkoff as British Corporal

Peter Leeds as Narrator

Awards:

1960 BAFTAs

Laurence Olivier - Best British Actor - Nominated

Author Bio:

George Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright, socialist, and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama. Over the course of his life he wrote more than 60 plays. Nearly all his plays address prevailing social problems, but each also includes a vein of comedy that makes their stark themes more palatable. In these works Shaw examined education, marriage, religion, government, health care, and class privilege.

An ardent socialist, Shaw was angered by what he perceived to be the exploitation of the working class. He wrote many brochures and speeches for the Fabian Society. He became an accomplished orator in the furtherance of its causes, which included gaining equal rights for men and women, alleviating abuses of the working class, rescinding private ownership of productive land, and promoting healthy lifestyles. For a short time he was active in local politics, serving on the London County Council.

In 1898, Shaw married Charlotte Payne-Townshend, a fellow Fabian, whom he survived. They settled in Ayot St. Lawrence in a house now called Shaw's Corner.

He is the only person to have been awarded both a Nobel Prize for Literature (1925) and an Oscar (1938). The former for his contributions to literature and the latter for his work on the film "Pygmalion" (adaptation of his play of the same name). Shaw wanted to refuse his Nobel Prize outright, as he had no desire for public honours, but he accepted it at his wife's behest. She considered it a tribute to Ireland. He did reject the monetary award, requesting it be used to finance translation of Swedish books to English.

Shaw died at Shaw's Corner, aged 94, from chronic health problems exacerbated by injuries incurred by falling.

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📘🎥Friday's Film Adaptation🎥📘: April Morning by Howard Fast

Summary:

Howard Fast’s bestselling coming-of-age novel about one boy’s introduction to the horrors of war amid the brutal first battle of the American Revolution.

On April 19, 1775, musket shots ring out over Lexington, Massachusetts. As the sun rises over the battlefield, fifteen-year-old Adam Cooper stands among the outmatched patriots, facing a line of British troops.

 

Determined to defend his home and prove his worth to his disapproving father, Cooper is about to embark on the most significant day of his life. The Battle of Lexington and Concord will be the starting point of the American Revolution—and when Cooper becomes a man.

 

Sweeping in scope and masterful in execution, April Morning is a classic of American literature and an unforgettable story of one community’s fateful struggle for freedom.

CHAPTER 1

The Afternoon

When I turned back to the house, my father called after me and asked me did I figure that I was finished. "I figure so," I said, and then my father said, in that way he has of saying something that cuts you down to half of your size or less:

"Slow to start and quick to finish."

He said it plain and quiet, but it was of a piece and it reminded me that I couldn't think of a time when he had said something pleasing or gentle with love or concern; and I replied to him, but not aloud—for which I didn't have the guts at all—"If just once in all my born days you'd say a good thing to me, then maybe I'd show good to you, and be able to do what you want me to do, and maybe read your mind or your soul." But aloud I said nothing, just began to walk toward the house, and his voice coiled after me like a whip around my ankle:

"Adam!"

"Yes, sir."

"I'll have you talk to me face to face, not into the air with your back to me."

"Yes, sir," I said, turning around.

"Draw your mother's evening water and bring it to her. Wasted steps are like wasted thoughts, just as empty and just as ignorant."

"Yes, Father," I said, and I went to the house and picked up the yoke and walked with it to the well. The sun was cutting. That's the time of the day when the sun touches the trees for evening time. That's the time of the day when the wind stops, and the air is so sweet you can taste it and suck it.

But that afternoon, the time of the day made me think about death, and I saw a chicken hawk in flight and waited for someone somewhere to send a load of bird shot after it; but no one did. I thought of death and was full of fear, and I just wanted to sit down somewhere and put my face in my hands and give in to the terrible frightened feeling I had; but I didn't. I have all kinds of strange thoughts and feelings of that sort, and I guess I never talked to anyone about them, except perhaps a little to Granny, because I didn't really believe that anyone in the world ever had just the same kind of thoughts.

When I drew the water from the well, I said the spell to take the curse off water, "Holy ghost and holy hell, get thee out of the mossy well." My father once heard me say that spell, and he took me into the barn and gave me seven with the birch rod. He hated spells and said they were worse than an instrument of the devil; they were an instrument of ignorance. And I was foolish enough to answer back that if he was so sure about all kinds of superstition, why did he birch me seven times, not eight or six? That was the way it was in the whole town. When you got the rod taken to you, you got it seven times.

I should have known enough to keep my mouth shut, because he replied that he was gratified to be enlightened and laid onto me ten times more, and then wanted to know whether I deemed seventeen to be a superstitious number?

So now I said the spell quietly, just moving my lips; a spell has no meaning if you only think it to yourself and never voice it. But quiet or not, my brother Levi, who is eleven years old, has cat's eyes. He popped up and demanded a drink from the bucket.

"Draw your own water," I told him.

"Don't be high and mighty. I seen you saying the spell. How would you like for me to tell Father that I seen you saying the spell?"

"You're a little bastard," I told him.

"Sure, and what did you just call your mother?"

"All right. Take your drink and leave me be. Why don't you stay out of my sight. I'd be happy to God if only you'd stay out of my sight."

I took a drink too. The water is always best, cold and crackling, when you first draw it.

When I came into the house, Mother was frying donkers, and the kitchen was full of the smell. You save a week's meat leftovers to make donkers, and then it's chopped together with bread and apples and raisins and savory spices, and fried and served up with boiled pudding. I don't know of anything better. When my mother saw me come in with the yoke, she took the water off and smiled her gratitude.

"You're a good boy, Adam," she said.

I didn't tell her that it wasn't my idea. I needed for someone to think something good about me, and I didn't want to disturb her thinking. When I ate some of the raw meatstuff, she slapped my hand. When I sat down, she said:

"Are you going to stay here and fill my head with your nonsense?"

"What nonsense? I haven't said a word."

"That's just it, Adam. You sit there with that look in your eyes, and just as plain as daylight I can see what kind of silly dream you're contemplating. When I was your age, if a boy had an hour between the chores and mealtime, he spent it with profit reading the Holy Writ. Granny told me how your father—just about your age it was—set himself a disciplined period to memorize three verses of Lamentations every evening."

"Lamentations?"

"And he did."

"Well, good heavens, what on earth did he want to memorize the verses of Lamentations every evening for?"

"To profit himself. And let me tell you this, Adam," she said. "I don't hold with the narrow views of some, but it seems to me that an expression like good heavens is precious close to swearing. It seems to me that the King's English is abundant enough to express every necessary shade of feeling and impatience without resorting to words that have sincere meaning when used properly. Have you been fighting with your brother again?"

"Now what gave you that idea?" I didn't wait for her to tell me, but got up and began to stalk out the way I had come. She had to know where I was going.

"Just to find Granny."

"She's upstairs."

I went upstairs, and Granny was in her room making thread. When I entered, she blinked at me and said, "I see less and less. Old age is pity enough, but when the eyesight goes, the good Lord is laying a heavy burden on my poor shoulders."

"Well, Granny," I replied, "I don't think your eyesight is going. It's just getting dark in here because the twilight has come down."

"Is that so, Adam?"

"Sure enough."

"Well, then, I've spun sufficiently," she declared. "Sit down, Adam. Do you want some sweets?"

I sat down on her old milking stool, which she had decorated with paint and turned into one of the prettiest things in the house, and reminded her that there was a widely held opinion to the effect that sweets before mealtime spoil an appetite.

"Oh?" she said. "I'm sure we'd all be rich if I could devise something to spoil your appetite, Adam." Then she went to the cupboard and got out the cotton kerchief that she always wrapped the maple sugar in, and she broke off a piece for each of us. I ate it slowly and appreciatively, and asked her whether it was true about my father and Lamentations.

"It's true."

"Well, what for? I mean, what was his purpose?"

"To profit himself."

"That's what Mother said, but I'll be damned if I can see the profit in it."

"You will be damned, Adam, if you go on with such talk." I shrugged. "And don't act as if you don't care."

"I think we keep saying things that we don't really mean at all, Granny."

"Do we? And what sort of things, Adam?"

"Like being damned. Do you believe in God, Granny?"

"What a question!" She snorted with great indignation. "In all my born days, Adam Cooper, I have never seen a boy like yourself for asking questions!"

"Well, do you?"

"Of course I do."

"Well, I don't know—"

"Adam Cooper, you are not going to start in again with all that silly nonsense of yours, are you?"

"Just one thing—just answer me one thing, Granny, that's all I'm asking. I just want you to answer me one thing. Why is it that they're always taking it out on me for whatever I say, like there's nothing in the world I can do right and everything I do is all wrong?"

"My goodness, the things you say, Adam!"

"Well, look at it this way, Granny. You believe in God, don't you?"

"Enough of that."

"If you believe in God, then God gave a person brains, didn't he?"

"Of course."

"But just as soon as you begin to use the brains God gave you, you're being sinful."

"That's just the sort of foolish thing you say, Adam, that's so provoking."

"Well, just take Isaiah Peterkin, for example."

"Oh, no," she said, her eyes narrowing, "I am not going to be trapped into that Isaiah Peterkin thing. It just happens that I was gathering blueberries the other day, and there you were down in the gully with Ruth Simmons, instructing her about Isaiah Peterkin, and I overheard enough—"

"Did you see us, Granny?"

"I didn't have to see you. As if I wouldn't know that Cooper voice of yours anywhere!"

I sighed with relief, and told her that even if I had gone into it a little with Ruth Simmons, that didn't make it any less a fact.

"It just seems to me, Adam," Granny said, "that shaking a body loose from her faith is about the most sinful thing you could do."

"Granny, I wasn't shaking anybody loose from anybody's faith. I'd like you to tell me how old Isaiah can be as mean and wicked and two-faced as he is, and be a deacon in the church and be looked up to as a real fine God-fearing man. I mean, he can get away with anything, just so long as he says the right words about religion."

"It's not for you to judge Isaiah Peterkin."

"I wasn't judging him," I protested. "Everyone knows how rich and mean he is. So how could I be judging him? Anyway, in Boston when we were there a fortnight past, there was a man talking right on the Common, and he said that the highest good was to doubt. Just like that, in those very words."

"I never heard such nonsense. If he said that, he was nobody worth quoting."

"He was a Committeeman, Granny."

"I don't believe a word of it"

"Cross my heart, Granny."

"Don't you dare cross your heart to me," she snapped, "just like you was Roman or some other heathen sect, and don't think that because I'm old and rheumatic and grateful for foolish company that you can say anything you please in front of me. You can't cozen me with a pretense at stupidity, not in one thousand years. You're a spiteful boy, and that's why your father loses patience with you."

"He doesn't lose patience, Granny. He doesn't have any patience to begin with."

"There!"

"And this was a Committeeman," I said.

"So. Well, just tell me this—was he a Sam Adams Committeeman?"

I admitted that he was most likely a Sam Adams Committeeman, and she shrugged her shoulders and said there wasn't anything else a body could expect, seeing that Sam Adams was an atheist and so were all of his cronies. Granny had a good mind, and I guess that was one of the reasons why I enjoyed provoking her. The other reason was that she would stand for being provoked, and practically no one else would. "Now if he had said, Adam," she went on, "that one of the paths to good was a certain amount of doubt and common sense, there might be some reason to his thoughts. Then he would have been sensible. But doubt is a negative thing and good is a positive thing, and anyone who says that both are the same thing is simply a fool, and there you are."

"That's it exactly, Granny. When you disagree with someone, you straight out and call them a fool. But when I disagree, I get my ears pinned back."

"I'm older than you, Adam, by a year or two."

"You said yourself that age doesn't teach most folks a blessed thing."

"Don't tell me what I said. If you propose to remain as narrow and opinionated as you are now all the years of your life—well, that's your choice. Most folks are one thing. I should hope that my grandson would be something else."

At that moment, Mother called from below that supper was ready, and I gave Granny my arm and helped her down the stairs. Her rheumatism was getting worse and worse. As we went down the staircase, myself a little in front of her because the staircase was so narrow, she said to me:

"Don't ever talk most to me, Adam. Most folks are not Coopers, and most folks do not live in this village or in this county either. Most folks are not dissenters, and most folks would just as soon find a chain to put around their necks, considering one wasn't there already. Coopers have been teachers and pastors and free yeomen farmers and ship captains and merchants for a hundred and fifty years on this soil, and I don't recall one of them who couldn't write a sermon and deliver it too, if the need ever arose."

"Well, maybe you're leaning on the first one, Granny," I said.

On weekdays, we ate our meals in the kitchen. On the Sabbath, we ate dinner in the dining room, and Mother set the table with china and silver. We weren't rich, but Granny's mother had been rich enough for china and silver. On weekdays, we ate with plainware.

Although there were only five of us in the immediate family, our table was always set with places for six, Mother at one end, Father at the other, Granny facing the two boys. The empty chair was next to Granny. My father claimed that the empty chair was, as he put it, a manifesto of hospitality, an invitation to anyone who crossed our threshold at mealtime; and I must admit that many a guest sat there, knowing that the welcome was ready at the Coopers', the food good and the cooking beyond compare. But my father's real purpose was an audience, and if possible an argument. There wasn't anyone in his own family whom he considered really worth arguing with, and as far as plain discourse was concerned, although we were a disciplined and trained audience, he could never be wholly sure that we were listening, and if listening, comprehending.

My own opinion was that Granny could win hands down in any argument, but she would not argue with her son in front of his own children. She also felt that one of her sex tended to be unladylike and pushy when she ventured on the finer points of the divine, ordinary, and inherent rights of man—which was mainly the subject.

Tonight, however, we had no guest at the beginning of the meal, and the five of us sat down and four of us bent our heads while Father said grace. He didn't hold with bending his head, at grace or any other time, and when Granny once raised this point with him, he replied that one of the many differences between ourselves and Papists and High Church people—who were a shade worse than Papists—was that whereas the latter two sects cringed and groveled before the clay and plaster images they worshiped, we stood face to face with our God, as befitting what He had created in His own image. Granny said that there was possibly some difference between cringing and groveling and a polite bending of the head from the neck, but Father wasn't moved. The difference was quantitative not qualitative, and therefore only a matter of degree. To him it was a principle. In two minutes, my father could lead any argument or discussion around to being a principle.

So he said grace glaring across the table at the imaginary point where he placed God, and I always felt that God had the worst of it. My father couldn't just begin a meal with something direct and ordinary, like "Thank Thee, O Lord, for Thy daily bread and the fruit of the harvest." Oh, no—no, he had to embellish it. If there was no guest at the meal, God was always present, and tonight my father said sternly:

"We thank thee, O Lord, for the bread we eat, but we are also conscious of seed we have planted, of the hands that guided the plow and the back bent in toil. The ground is dry as dust, and I will take the liberty of asking for a little rain. I know that Thou givest with one hand and Thou takest away with the other, but sometimes it seems to me to go beyond the bounds of reason. Amen!"

Then he turned to his soup. Granny lifted her head and stared at him, and finally said, "Moses?"

"Yes, Mother?"

She sighed, and we all began to eat.

"Yes, Mother?"

"Nothing," Granny said. "Nothing at all."

"Whatever is on your mind, Mother, I would appreciate your coming out with it and saying it."

"Eat your soup, Moses," she sighed.

He was inordinately fond of soup, and during the soup he left conversation to the women and children. I did not have much to say to Levi, being occupied with my own thoughts, some of them about Ruth Simmons and also some thoughts about going to sea. If you had respectable kin in Boston, it was generally understood that one of the younger sons would go to sea and learn the trade, since there was no better way to end up with a fine house and a wife in silks and laces, and good, imported furniture as well as some standing in the community. I was not a younger son, but one day in Boston, Captain Ishmael Jamison, my uncle on my mother's side, had felt my muscles, asked me a number of questions, and finished by wondering how I would like to sign on with him as bottom junior on a voyage to the Indies. I was remembering this, contemplating it, and speculating on whether there weren't more interesting girls in the world than Ruth Simmons, whom I had seen at least every day of my life. I also kept in back of my mind a picture of my father's rage if I came out with so much as a hint about going to sea.

The bloody confrontation at the Massachusetts towns of Lexington and Concord that precipitated the American Revolution, as seen through the experiences of one family.

Release Date: April 24, 1988

Release Time: 100 minutes

Director: Delbert Mann

Cast:

Tommy Lee Jones as Moses Cooper

Susan Blakely as Sarah Cooper

Chad Lowe as Adam Cooper

Robert Urich as Joseph Simmons

Meredith Salenger as Ruth Simmons

Rip Torn as Solomon Chandler

Joan Heney as Granny Cooper

Nicholas Kilbertus as John Parker

Griffith Brewer as Samuel Hadley

Thor Bishopric as Jonathan Harrington

Joel Miller as The Reverend

Brian Furlong as Joash Smith

Anthony Ulc as Simon Casper (as Tony Ulc)

Philip Spensley as John Buckman

Peter Colvey as Major John Pitcairn

Alan Mozes as Young British Soldier

Jeannie Walker as Mrs. Simmons

Gary Plaxton as Lt. Col. Francis Smith

Jon Baggaley as Metcalf (as John Baggaley)

Vlasta Vrana as Paul Revere

Burke Lawrence as Rider on Concord Road

Paul Rutledge as Lt. Sutherland

Ken Siegel as Enseign de Berniere

David Gow as Men at Akins Farm

Tedd Dillon as Men at Akins Farm (as Teddy Lee Dillon)

James Coull as Captain Parson

Timothy Hine as British Soldier

Vincent Glorioso as Lt. Baker

Awards:

1988 Emmys

Outstanding Achievement in Music Composition for a Miniseries or Special (Dramatic Underscore) - Allyn Ferguson - Nominated

Author Bio:

Howard Fast (1914–2003) was one of the most prolific American writers of the twentieth century. He was a bestselling author of more than eighty works of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and screenplays. The son of immigrants, Fast grew up in New York City and published his first novel upon finishing high school in 1933. In 1950, his refusal to provide the United States Congress with a list of possible Communist associates earned him a three-month prison sentence. During his incarceration, Fast wrote one of his best-known novels, Spartacus (1951). Throughout his long career, Fast matched his commitment to championing social justice in his writing with a deft, lively storytelling style.

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📘🎥Friday's Film Adaptation🎥📘: Drums Along the Mohawk by Walter D Edmonds

Summary:
The seventy-fifth anniversary of the publication of Drums along the Mohawk reminds us not only that Edmonds’s masterpiece is the best historical novel about Upstate New York since James Fenimore Cooper but also that it was number one on the best-seller list until overtaken by Gone With the Wind.

This is the story of the forgotten pioneers of the Mohawk Valley during the Revolutionary War. Here Gilbert Martin and his young wife struggled and lived and hoped. Combating hardships almost too great to endure, they helped give to America a legend that still stirs the heart. In the midst of love and hate, life and death, danger and disaster, they stuck to the acres that were theirs and fought a war without ever quite understanding it. Drums along the Mohawk has been an American classic since its original publication in 1936. This Syracuse University Press edition reproduces the book in its entirety.

"The best work of its kind. Throbs with life upon a hostile frontier ... doubly thrilling as Mr. Edmonds sets it down, touched with local color, lively with dialogue, bright with suspense". -- The New York Times

Book I

The Militia 

Gilbert Martin and Wife, Magdelana (1776)

It was the second day of their journey to their first home. Lana, in the cart, looked back to see how her husband was making out with the cow. He had bought it from the Domine for a wedding present to her. He had hesitated a long while between the cow and the clock; and she had been disappointed when he finally decided on the cow, even though it cost three dollars more; but now she admitted that it would be a fine thing to have a cow to milk. As he said, it would give her companionship when he was working in the woods.

Privately she had thought at the time that she would show him that she could manage their first house and help him with the fields also. She was a good strong girl, eighteen years old the day she married, and she thought that if they both worked hard, in a few years they would have money enough to pay thirteen dollars for a clock if they really wanted it. There were only two cows anyway at Deerfield Settlement, and she might make money with the extra butter. 

The cow had given a good deal of trouble yesterday, leaving its own village, but this morning it seemed to be anxious to keep up with the cart. Lana supposed the land looked strange to the poor beast, and that now the cart and the small brown mare were the only things it felt at home with. 

Gilbert smiled when she looked back, and raised the hand in which he carried the birch switch. He had taken off his jacket, for the weather was warm, and his shirt was open at the neck. She thought, “He’s handsome,” and waved back cheerfully. Anyway, the Reverend Mr. Gros made two clocks a year which he tried to sell to any couple he was marrying, and no doubt a year or two from now there would be one to pick out if they ever came back so far. 

The Domine had wedded Magdelana Borst to Gilbert Martin in the Palatine Church at Fox’s Mills two days ago. There had been just her family in the little stone structure, Mr. and Mrs. Gros, and a couple of Indians, half drunk, who had heard of the ceremony and happened over from Indian Castle in hopes of getting incited to the breakfast. Lana’s father had given them a York shilling to get rid of them and they had gone down to Jones’s tavern to buy rum saying, “Amen” very gravely in English. 

It was a pleasant breakfast in the Dutch-like kitchen with its red and black beams. They had had glasses of the hard cider saved over from last fall, and sausage and cornbread, and then Gilbert had gone out to get the cart and cow and Mother had slipped tearfully upstairs and come down again with the air of a surprise and given Lana the Bible for a departing present. 

It was a beautiful book, bound in calfskin, with a gilded clasp. She had taken it to the Domine for him to write in, and he had put her name very elegantly on the flyleaf, Magdelana martin, and then very solemnly he had turned to the empty pages at the back and had written there:—

July 10, 1776-married this day Gilbert Martin, of Deerfield Settlement, Tryon County, the State of New York, North America, to Magdelana Borst, of Fox’s, Tryon County, by Reverend Daniel Gros.

They had all thought it was very impressive, seeing “the State of New York,” and Mother had looked tearful again for a moment or two, because, as she said, there was no telling what kind of country it was now, with its name changed, and all the troubles of the war in Canada. 

But that had passed over quickly. It had been too late then to bring up the old argument about the Indian menace, by which for a week they had tried to persuade Gilbert to settle on their own farm. His place seemed so far away—it would take two days to get to—it was more than thirty miles.

But Gilbert had been unshakable. He had paid for the land in Hazenclever’s Patent beyond Crosby’s Manor. He said that it was good land. He had worked there all fall and got his house up and cleared some ground already, and would have a crop of Indian corn, on part of it. It was something no one in his right senses could abandon. And he was capable of looking after Lana as well as any man. 

She remembered how he and her father had talked together, and that talk had impressed her father. “He has paid for his land,” he said, “and he has built his house alone so that he could buy himself a yoke of oxen, with the money saved.”

“But, Henry,” said her mother, “Lana knows nobody up there. It is so far away.” 

“Gilbert has friends and neighbors,” he said. “I think Lana will get along all right,” and he had smiled at her. “You can’t keep all your daughters to yourself, you know, Mummschen. What would the poor young men do, if all the mothers in the world did that? Where would I have been, if your mother had done that to you? I ask you.” He had even laughed about it, while Gilbert, for some reason, looked embarrassed, maybe because Lana’s sisters were looking at him so admiringly. It seemed a wonderful thing to them for a girl to start off to a strange place with a man like Gilbert, whom she had seen not more than half a dozen times before in her life. 

That first time she had seen him seemed long ago now, though it was still less than a year. Then months and four days, to-day, Lana said to herself, shaking the reins over the mare’s back. She and her sisters had been drying flax over the put on the hillside. They had been playing at kentecoying, and perhaps they had become careless, for they had not noticed the young man coming along the road. And when they had at last seen him just below them, looking up at Lana and smiling, Lana had stepped back inadvertently onto the poles in which the flax was spread, and the poles had come loose from the hillside, throwing her and the flax at once into the pit of coals. The flax instantly burst into flame, but with the quickness of lighting, the sisters said, the young man had flung down his pack, run up the hill, and jumped down into the pit. Lana’s heavy linsey petticoat had not caught fire; but by the time he had hoisted her out, her calico short gown was burning, and with great presence of mind he had lifted her petticoat over her head, wrapping the upper half of her body in it and so smothering the flames. 

If he had not saved her daughter’s life, Mrs. Borst told him half an hour later, he had certainly saved her from being badly scarred. She called it a noble action and asked him to stay the night. He had accepted. At supper he had told them that he was going west. He had no family, but he had enough money to buy some land with. 

Little did Mrs. Borst or Lana herself guess how it would turn out. But when he left he caught her alone outside the door and whispered that he would return some day, if she were willing he should. Lana could not answer, beyond nodding’ but that had seemed enough for him; and he went away with big strides while her father said behind her, “That’s a fine young man.”

Lana had dreamed about him during the winter. Often she thought he would not come back. But in the end of the winter, just when the sugaring was beginning, he had arrived one afternoon. He told them about his experiences in the westward. Up there they didn’t hear much of the political doings of the lower valley. They knew that Guy Johnson and the Butlers had gone west, of course, and Mr. Weaver, Gil’s neighbor, attended Committee meetings from time to time, which gave them some news. But Mr. Kirkland, the missionary, had made the Oneida Indians so friendly that one did not have the same feeling about the possibility of an Indian war. And besides, when people were clearing land they were too busy all day and too tired at night to think much about other things. 

Gilbert himself had started clearing his first five acres. He had boarded during the winter with the Weavers, who had been very nice to him, paying for his food by helping George Weaver one day a week. He had got his cabin walls laid up and a good chimney in. The cabin was set right at the turn the road made for the Mohawk River ford. One could look from the door south across the marsh to the river itself, a fine prospect. Behind the house there was a natural spring.

Though he told the family about these things, Lana, in her heart, knew he was telling them to her alone. She was afraid, after supper, to go out, knowing that he would follow her. But nothing she could do could keep her from offering to step down to Jones’s for her father’s beer. And as she knew he would, the young man offered to go with her to carry the jug.

On the way down he had told her still more about the place. It sounded like the most wonderful place she had ever seen. He was going to buy a plough and also get a yoke of oxen this summer. There was some natural pasture along the river on his place. The loam was deep. He expected it was four feet deep in places. He had built the cabin with an extra high roof, which made the sleeping loft quite airy. He had never slept better in his life than he had slept in that loft. In March he had bought two window sashes from Wolff’s store in Cosby’s Manor, glass sashes, so that the kitchen seemed as light as a church. He wished Lana could see it. 

Though Lana wished so herself, they had by that time come to Jones’s, and she had had to go in after the beer. When she came out again, the young man had been quite silent. Even when she had asked him a shy question or two, he had hardly answered. It was only as they came in sight of the lighted windows of the Borst house that he asked her suddenly whether she would come and look at it as his wife.

“Yes,” said Lana. Though she had expected the question all along, and though she knew what her answer was going to be, the word put her into a panic. “You’ll have to ask Father,” she added. 

He had done so, much more calmly than he had asked her; and after their walk together, her father had also said “Yes.” And then Gilbert had arranged to come back for her when his first rush of spring work was ended, so long as he should not be called out on militia duty.

Now they were on the Kingsroad. It ran from the ford at Schenectady the length of the Mohawk Valley; passing the Johnson land, Guy Park and Fort Johnson, Caughnawaga, Spraker’s, Fox’s, Nellis’s, Klock’s, and on to the carrying place at the falls. Then past the Eldridge Settlement, which was on the north side of the river opposite German Flats, and so to the settlement at the West Canada Creek crossing. Form that settlement it continued into the woods through Schuyler, to Cosby’s Manor, and then to Deerfield, where it crossed the river. West of there it was a barely passable track into the Indian camp at Oriska on Oriskany Creek. It ended at Fort Stanwix, which some people were saying would be repaired this summer by the Continental government.

From her high perch on the cart, Lana had looked out over the Mohawk all day. Last evening they had climbed the steep ascent beside the falls. A little before that, Gilbert had come alongside the cart to point out to her the fine red brick house of Colonel Herkimer with its gambrel roof, higher than any roof she had ever seen. But once past the falls they had burrowed into a stretch of woods, and for a way the land seemed wild. There was only one house, a small one, glimpsed through an opening in the trees. Then, almost at dark, they had emerged on the broad intervale lands that marked the beginning of the German Flats. A little tavern stood beside the road, and they put up in it. 

Lana thought of their arrival with swelling pride. The landlord, a Mr. Billy Rose, was smoking an after-supper pipe in the door. He was in his shirt, with a leather apron, and had bidden her “Good evening,” quite politely. 

Gil came up, harrying the cow. He walked directly to the innkeeper and asked for a night’s lodging. “Two shilling for you and the missis,” said the innkeeper, “and one for the mare. You can turn the cow in by the apple tree.”

“We’ll want a room to ourselves then,” said Gil. 

“You can have the top room,” said Mr. Rose. “I can’t guarantee not to have to stick in someone else, though.”

Gil never so much as batted his eye. He held is purse open in one hand and put his fingers in. “Would two fips be worth a guarantee, Mr. Rose?”

“Seeing it’s the top room,” said Mr. Rose, “I’ll guarantee it.” He took the two fips and slipped them into a pocket under his apron; and after that he became most obliging, addressing Lana continually as “Mrs. Martin” and calling Gil “Mister,” and once even “Esquire.”

Lana fixed her hair in the back shed with Mrs. Rose’s glass, shook the dust for her dress with a whisk of twigs, and came back to Gil. They had supper at a table for themselves in the tap, as quietly as any well-wedded couple in the world. There was only one other man there and he hardly noticed them. He was a one-eyed man, a stranger, Mr. Rose said, on his way up from Albany. 

They had some blood sausage with pig greens, sauerkraut, and smoked trout, and Gil had insisted on her taking a small glass of gin with him. “Seeing it’s to-night,” he managed to whisper. “Just especial.” The whole affair seemed to Lana ruinously expensive, but after the drink she found herself flooded with a feeling of utter irresponsibility. She even enjoyed it when a small stout man named Captain Small, with a couple of friends, dropped down from Eldridge’s and started talking in loud voices about Sir John Johnson’s having broken his parole and taken off the Highlanders to Canada. One side said that that was a good thing, getting the Scotch out of the valley; and the other said that it meant there would be nothing to hold back the Tories. But Mr. Rose reminded them that it had happened two months ago, nearly to the day, and there had been no chance in the war. 

Lana felt herself very mature to be sitting in a taproom listening to men, and she tried to understand what they were saying about the army’s being driven back out of Canada. Small said, “Georgie Helmer come back last month. He was with Montgomery’s regiment. He said it all went fine till the last day of last year when they didn’t take Quee-bec. They he said everything went to pieces. Arnold got hurt and since then the smallpox has got into the army. He had it. He said he bought an inoculation off a Dr. Barker for fifteen cents cash money. And he was the first man in his company to get it. Everybody that bought inoculations off Barker got the disease. They thought it was because his hands was dirty and he didn’t clean his nail, which eh scratched them with. Then they found out he’d been all through the army and everybody he touched got it. Ain’t that an awful way to fight, though?”

Everybody nodded. Lana watched the shadow of Mr. Rose’s queue nodding up and down along the neck of a bottle. When she looked at him, he was still nodding, and the eelskin his hair was clubbed in glistened a greenish gray. 

“The trouble is,” he said, “there ain’t anybody up there worth two cents except Arnold, and Captain Brown.”

“Brown says Arnold is no better than the rest.”

“John Brown’s a good man.”

They argued. The one-eyed man in the corner, who hadn’t said anything, now raised his voice. He had a pursy mouth and spoke softly.

“The trouble with the American army is your Continental Congress,” he said.

“What do you mean?” It was Gil who asked, and the truculence in his voice thrilled Lana. All the others were looking from him to the stranger. 

But the stranger said calmly, “I mean what I said. It’s no better than a cesspool. What good there is in it is hid by the scum that keeps getting on top.”

Captain Small said, “I guess you mean Adams and that Yankee bunch.”

The one-eyed man nodded, looking at Gil. The patch over his eye gave his face an oddly sinister expression.

“They’re a bunch of failures and they talk loud to keep themselves in power. I wouldn’t put the dependence in them I’d put in a bedbug. They all bite when you’re asleep. Why, if I lived up here, I wouldn’t take chances playing with them.”

“Wouldn’t you?” said Gil. “Why not?”

“Because they only play politics with the army. How many regulars do they send up here? None. Why not? Because you don’t count to them for votes. You can’t bring pressure on them. And I hear there’s seven hundred British troops moving up to Oswego this fall. But that won’t bother them, safe in Philadelphia. Why, anybody could see this war would have to be won up north.”

“Say, what’s your business up here?”

“My business is to see what’s going on,” the man said equably, “and my name’s Caldwell.” He got up from his corner and moved towards Billy Rose. “How about my tally?” he asked.

Nobody said anything as he paid across the plank bar. But when he stopped in the door to ask how far it was to Shoemaker’s, they told him it was eight miles.

“He’s a queer-acting cuss,” observed Small.

Rose said, “There’s a lot of queer people in the valley, now. Did he mean the Indians was coming down?”

“I think,” said Gil, “That there’s a lot of foolish talk about this Indian business. Just because it happened in the French war, don’t mean it will now.”

“Listen, young man,” said Captain Small. “How would you feel if you’d been drove out of your land and house? If you was a mean man naturally?”

“You mean the Butlers and Johnsons?”

“Them,” said Small. “Them and their bunch.”

“But that don’t mean they’ll bring the Indians.”

“Listen, Mr. Martin. The Mohawks went west with them. They’ve got to feed them, hain’t they? They plain can’t do that in Niagara. Ten to one they get them foraging down here.”

“Well,” said Gil, “I guess we can look after them all right.”

“I guess we’ll have to, young man.”

Gil rose and, feeling his hand on her arm, Lana rose with him. As she saw the others watching her, she went suddenly pink. She felt that she was blushing all over while they said good-night. Mr. Rose picked up his Betty lamp and took them to the stairs. 

“Have a good sleep,” he said.

“Good night,” they said.

Gil went first. When Lana climbed through the trapdoor into the small stuffy room with its cord bed in the middle, like a fortress in a little clearing, he was facing her. 

“You didn’t get scared with what they said?” he asked anxiously. “You hear that kind of talk all over the place.”

She was still faintly tingling from the unaccustomed drink. And she looked at him, so straight and tall, with his good features and his blue eyes, and lean broad shoulders, remembering the way he had picked her out of the flax kiln. She felt proud and reckless and gay.

“Not of the Indians,” she said.

Then her eyes dropped and she couldn’t look at him again as they undressed.

A young couple fights off Indian attacks to start a farm in the Mohawk Valley.

Release Date:  November 3, 1939
Release Time: 103 minutes

Director: John Ford

Cast:
Henry Fonda as Gilbert "Gil" Martin
Claudette Colbert as Magdelana "Lana" Martin
Edna May Oliver as Mrs. McKlennar
John Carradine as Caldwell
Ward Bond as Adam Helmer
Roger Imhof as Gen. Nicholas Herkimer
Arthur Shields as Rev. Rosenkrantz
Chief John Big Tree as Blue Back
Francis Ford as Joe Boleo
Jessie Ralph as Mrs. Weaver
Robert Lowery as John Weaver
Kay Linaker as Mrs. Demooth
Russell Simpson as Dr. Petry
Spencer Charters as Innkeeper

Awards:
Academy Awards 1940
Best Supporting Actress - Edna May Oliver - Nominated
Best Cinematography, Color - Ray Rennahan and Bert Glennon - Nominated

Author Bio:

Walter D. Edmonds has been a National Book Award winner and recipient of the Newbery Medal. He is the author of Bert Breen’s Barn, The Boyds of Black River, In the Hands of the Senecas, Mostly Canallers, Rome Haul, Time to Go House, and most recently the autobiographical Tales My Father Never Told, all available from Syracuse University Press.

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