Lingering less than an hour for this ceremony, he rode on to the headquarters at Cambridge, and when he came within the lines the shouts of the soldiers and the booming of cannon announced his arrival to the English in Boston.
The next day he rode forth in the presence of a great multitude, and the troops having been drawn up before him, he drew his sword beneath the historical elm-tree, and took command of the first American army.
"His excellency," wrote Dr.Thatcher in his journal, "was on horseback in company with several military gentlemen.

It was not difficult to distinguish him from all others.

He is tall and well proportioned, and his personal appearance truly noble and majestic." "He is tall and of easy and agreeable address," the loyalist Curwen had remarked a few weeks before; while Mrs.John Adams, warm-hearted and clever, wrote to her husband after the general's arrival: "Dignity, ease, and complacency, the gentleman and the soldier, look agreeably blended in him.

Modesty marks every line and feature of his face.

Those lines of Dryden instantly occurred to me,-- 'Mark his majestic fabric! He's a temple Sacred by birth, and built by hands divine; His soul's the deity that lodges there; Nor is the pile unworthy of the God.'" Lady, lawyer, and surgeon, patriot and tory, all speak alike, and as they wrote so New England felt.