Hark, Hark the trumpet sounds,


O’er seas and solid grounds,

The American Revolution was going full tilt when, one day in 1779, there was a commotion in the New York legislature at Albany. Samuel Dodge, member for Dutchess County, was its cause. He had written the poem above, and a copy had gotten, by plan, into other hands. A member leapt to his feet to read the verses aloud and prove the “d—nd Tory principles” of the author. Naturally the reader had read from left to right, a full line at a time, and the House groaned and hissed. The members demanded to know whether Dodge avowed such treasonable views. Read the poem again, he asked, but this time read it differently —not straight across but in couplets, first from the left column, then the right. On hearing the same words again, the legislators now cheered loudly. “Thus,” dryly concluded a long-ago witness, “the instability of the hearers was soon perceivable.”

— Contributed by John Lowell Pratt, great-great-great-grandson of Samuel Dodge