staff, who were their superiors in rank and pay, as well as in everything else.
The youthfulness of the Harvard contingent is another significant circumstance. From portraits and “pen-pictures,” almost always made in their declining years (aided perhaps by natural sentiments of veneration), we are apt to envisage our patriotic ancestors as composites of Joshua and Methuselah. As a matter of fact, the Revolution was a young man’s war—like most other wars. Indeed, the line of political demarcation was largely that of age: the new generation espoused the new cause; their elders clave to the established order, and either actively or passively opposed the revolt. The Hospital Corps was no exception. Foster himself was only 35, Rand was 33, Aspinwall 32, Windship and Gamage 30, Hayward, Hitchcock, and Hunt 26, McKnight and Mansfield 25, Adams 24, Warren, Jones, Glover, and McHenry 22, Harrington, Thacher, Crosby, and Whitwell 21, Hurd and Stone 19, and Bartlett only 16. Here was the young and progressive element of the profession, the men who, in spite of their youth, had already made good, and who in after years were to make better still. Here, too, was a considerable group of undergraduates, who, unexpectedly requisitioned as assistants and mates, developed an interest in medicine that gave the whole College a strong trend in that direction,
