[Illustration:  Old North Church Steeple.]

A British army held New York.  Another British army under Cornwallis was at Yorktown in Virginia.  General Washington had marched to Yorktown.  He was trying to capture the army of General Cornwallis.  He was afraid that ships and soldiers would be sent from New York to help Cornwallis.  But there were men in New York who were secretly on Washington’s side.  One of these was to let him know when ships should sail to help Cornwallis.

But Washington was six hundred miles away from New York.  How could he get the news before the English ships should get there?  There were no telegraphs.  The fastest horses ridden one after another could hardly have carried news to him in less than two weeks.  But Washington had a plan.  One of the men who sent news to Washington was living in New York.  When the ships set sail, he went up on the top of his house and hoisted a white flag, or something that looked like a white flag.

On the other side of the Hudson River in a little village a man was watching this very house.  As soon as he saw the white flag flapping, he took up his gun and fired it.  Farther off there was a man waiting to hear this gun.  When he heard it, he fired another gun.  Farther on there was the crack of another, and then another gun.  By the firing of one gun after another the news went southward.  Bang, bang! went gun after gun across the whole State of New Jersey.  Then guns in Pennsylvania took it up and sent the news onward.  Then on across the State of Maryland the news went from one gun to another, till it reached Virginia, where it passed on from gun to gun till it got to Yorktown.  In less than two days Washington knew that ships were coming.

When Washington knew that British ships were coming, he pushed the fighting at Yorktown with all his might.  When the English ships got to Chesapeake Bay at last, Cornwallis had already surrendered.  The United States was free.  The ships had come too late.

A BOY’S TELEGRAPH.

The best telegraph known before the use of electricity, was invented by two schoolboys in France.  They were brothers named Chappe (shap-pay).  They were in different boarding schools some miles apart, and the rules of their schools did not allow them to write letters to each other.  But the two schools were in sight of each other.  The brothers invented a telegraph.  They put up poles with bars of wood on them.  These bars would turn on pegs or pins.  The bars were turned up or down, or one up and another down, or two down and one up, and so on.  Every movement of the bars meant a letter.  In this way the two brothers talked to each other, though they were miles apart.  When the boys became men, they sold their plan to the French Government.  The money they got made their fortune.

[Illustration:  A Mail Carrier.]

About the time they were selling this plan to the French Government, a boy named Samuel Morse was born in this country.  Fifty years later this Samuel Morse set up the first Morse electric telegraph, which is the one we now use.