Text Leveling System

My Brother Sam is Dead

RDQ:	1636	Max Word/Sent	46	Total Words	1952		Diff Words	576
Lex	850	Ave Word/.Sent	11	Hi Freq occurs	1387	71.1%	Hi freq	235	40.8%
AR	4.5	Long Sentences	19.3	Low Freq occurs	95	4.9%	Low freq	69	12%

It was April and outside in the dark the rain
whipped against the windows of our tavern making a
sound like muffled drums. We were concentrating on
our dinner and everybody jumped when the door
slammed open and banged against the wall making the
plates rattle in the racks. My brother Sam was standing 
there wearing a uniform. Oh my he looked proud.]]
"Sam" my mother said. We hadn't seen him since
Christmas.
"Shut the door" Father said. "The rain is blowing 
in." That's the way Father was-do right first and 
then be friendly.
But Sam was too excited to pay attention. "We've 
beaten the British in Massachusetts" he shouted.
"Who has beaten the British?" Father said.
Sam shut the door. "We have" he said with his 
back to us as he slipped the latch in place. "The 
Minutemen. The damn Lobsterbacks marched out of Boston 
yesterday. They were looking for Mr. Adams and Mr. 
Hancock and they marched up to Lexington. Some of
the Massachusetts Minutemen tried to stop them there 
in the square but there were too many British and they 
got through and went on up to Concord looking for 
ammunitions stores. But the Patriots got the stores 
hidden mostly and they didn't find much. And then 
when they turned around and went back the Minutemen 
hid in the fields along the roads and massacred 
them all the way back to Boston."
Nobody said anything. They were silent and shocked.
I couldn't take my eyes off him; he looked so brave.
He was wearing a scarlet coat with silver buttons and a 
white vest and black leggings halfway up to his knees. 
Oh I envied him. He knew everybody was staring but 
he liked being the center of attention and he pretended]]
it was just an ordinary thing and he was used to it. "I'm 
starved" he said and sat down at the table "I started 
out from Yale at six o'clock this morning and didn't 
stop to eat all the way."
There were seven of us at the table in the taproom. 
Mother and Father and me were there. Then there was 
the minister Mr. Beach who lived in Newtown but 
spent Saturday night here in Redding so he could 
preach in our church early Sunday morning. Then 
there was a couple of farmers from Redding Center I 
didn't know and of course Sam. But still they all sat 
silent. I guess they figured that it was up to Father 
to speak first seeing as Sam was his son.
My mother got up fetched a plate from the rack 
and filled it with stew from the iron pot on the fire. 
Then she drew Sam a pot of beer from the tap and put 
it all down in front of him. He was hungry and he 
bent over his plate and began shoving in the food as 
fast as he could.
"Don't eat like that" Father snapped.
Sam looked embarrassed and sat up straight.
"All right now" Father said. "Tell us the news 
again in an orderly manner." Father had a temper and 
I could see he was trying hard not to lose it.
Sam dug his spoon into the stew and started to fill 
his mouth but suddenly he realized that if he began 
talking with his mouth full Father would yell at him]]
again so he put the spoonful of stew back on his plate. 
"Well it's hard to tell it orderly Father. There were so 
many rumors around New Haven last night that-"
"I thought it might be like that" Father said.
"No no it's true about the fighting" Sam said. 
"Captain Arnold told us himself."
"Captain Arnold?"
"Captain Benedict Arnold. He's Captain of the 
Governor's Second Foot Guard." He looked down at 
his stew. "That's my company." He looked up and 
gave Father a quick sort of scared look.
"That explains the fancy dress I imagine" Father 
said.
"Captain Arnold designed the uniform-"
"Never mind tell the story."
"Well the beginning was when the Lobsterbacks-"
"By that I suppose you mean the soldiers of your 
King" Father said. He was still holding onto his 
temper.
Sam blushed. "All right the British troops. From 
the garrison in Boston. They marched up to Lexington 
looking for Mr. Adams and the rest but they'd got 
away. Somebody signalled them from some church 
steeple in Boston so when the Lobst-British got up 
to Lexington there wasn't anybody there except the 
Minutemen. Then the shooting started-"
Mr. Beach put his hand up to stop Sam. "Who shot 
first Sam?"]] 
Sam looked confused. "Well I guess the British. I 
mean that's what they said in New Haven."
"Who said?"
"Well I'm not sure" Sam said. "I guess it's hard to 
tell in a battle. But anyway-"
"Sam" Father said. "Who do you think fired first?"
"I don't know Father I don't know. But 
anyway-"
"I should think it might matter to know Sam"
Father said.
"Why does it matter?" Sam was beginning to lose 
his temper the way he did. "What right have the 
Lobsterbacks to be here anyway?" I thought it was pretty 
funny that he kept calling the British Lobsterbacks 
when he was dressed in red too
"All right all right" Mr. Beach said. "Let's not 
argue the point. What happened then?"
"Yes sir" Sam said. "So anyway some men were 
killed I don't know how many and then the British 
went on up to someplace called Concord looking for the 
ammunition stores there but they didn't find very 
much and turned around and started back to Boston. 
That was when the Minutemen really peppered them; 
they chased them all the way back home." Quickly 
Sam began to eat his stew before they had time to ask 
him more questions.
"Damn it that's rebellion" one of the farmers said. 
"They'll have us in war yet."]] 
Mr. Beach shook his head. "I think men of common sense will prevail. Nobody wants rebellion except fools and hotheads."
"That's not what they say in New Haven sir" Sam said. "They say that the whole colony of Massachusetts is ready to fight and if Massachusetts fights Connecticut will fight too."
Finally my father lost his temper and slammed his hand down on the table making the plates jump. "I will not have treason spoken in my house Sam."
"Father that isn't treas-"
Father raised his hand and for a moment I thought he was going to reach across the table and hit Sam. But instead he slammed it down on the table again. "In my house I will decide what constitutes treason. What have they been teaching you at college?"
Mr. Beach liked peace. "I don't think the people of Redding are anxious to fight Sam" he said.
Sam was nervous but being Sam he was bound to argue. "You get the wrong idea from Redding sir. There's a lot more Tories in this part of Connecticut than in the rest of the colonies. In New Haven there aren't so many Loyalists and in some towns there aren't any at all."
"Oh Sam" Mr. Beach said "I think you'll find that loyalty is a virtue everywhere. We've had these things before-that vicious nonsense of those madmen dressing]] 
 up like Indians and throwing tea into Boston Harbor as if wetting a few hundredweight of tea would stop the mightiest army on the face of the earth. These agitators can always manage to stir up the passions of the people for a week or so but it never lasts. A month later everybody's forgotten it-except the wives and children of the men who've managed to get themselves killed."
"Sir it's worth dying to be free."
That made Father shout "Free? Free to do what Sam? Free to mock your King? To shoot your neighbor? To make a mess of thousands of lives? Where have you been getting these ideas?"
"You don't understand Father you just don't understand. If they won't let us be free we have to fight. Why should they get rich off our taxes back in England? They're 3000 miles away how can they make
laws for us? They have no idea of how things are here."
It made me nervous to listen to Sam argue with Father. I could see that Mr. Beach wanted to quiet him down too before he and Father got into a real fight the way they sometimes did. "God meant man to obey. He meant children to obey their fathers he meant men to obey their kings. As a subject of the Lord Our God I don't question His ways. As a subject of His Majesty George the Third should you]] 
question his ways? Answer me this Sam-do you really think you know better than the King and those learned men in Parliament?"
 "Some of those men in Parliament agree with me sir."
"Not many Sam."
"Edmund Burke."
Father lost his temper again. He banged his hand down on the table once more. "Sam. There'll be no more talk on this tonight."
He meant it and Sam knew he meant it too so he shut up and the conversation turned to repairs Mr.
Beach wanted to make to the church. I was glad too. It scared me when Sam argued with the grownups like that. Of course Sam was that way always shooting out whatever came into his mind and sometimes even getting hit by my father for it. Father hardly ever hit me but he hit Sam dozens of times mostly for arguing. Mother always said "Sam isn't really rebellious just too quick with his tongue. If he'd only learn to stop and think before he spoke." But Sam couldn't seem to learn that. My mother hated it when Father hit Sam for speaking out but there wasn't anything she could do about it and anyway she believed that Father was right children ought to keep a civil tongue in their heads. I guess he was right Children are supposed to keep quiet and not say anything even when they know]] 
the grownups are wrong but sometimes it's hard. Sometimes I have trouble keeping quiet myself although not near as much trouble as Sam.
Of course Sam was almost a grownup himself. He was sixteen; he'd been away at college for almost a year so you couldn't really call him a child anymore. I guess that was part of the trouble; he thought he was a grownup and he didn't want anybody to tell him what to do. Except I could tell that he was still afraid of Father.
But to be honest I wasn't sure if Sam was right about the fighting anyway. It sounded right when he said it-that we should be free and not have to take orders from people who were so far away and all that. But I figured there had to be more to it than Sam knew about. Father had never gone to college the way Sam had but still I was pretty sure that he knew more than Sam. Father was a grownup and maybe Sam thought he was a grownup too but as far as I was concerned he was just my brother. He couldn't scare you the way Father could.
Besides it made me glad to have him come home and I didn't want him to get into a big fight with Father and spoil it. I just wanted him to shut up until dinner was over and we could go up to the loft where we slept and I could lie in the dark snuggled up next to him to keep warm and let him tell me stories about]]

Subjective Criteria

Illustrations: No support

Dialog: Multiple speakers

Dialog: Broken dialogue

Dialog: Unlabeled Speaker

Vocabulary: Some difficult words

Language: Many descriptive words

Sentences: Many Long Complex

Text structure: Story/Poem

Complexity: Several ideas - closely related

Concepts: Abstract/Difficult

Chapters

Features

Integral Setting - Historical

Integral Setting - Cultural/Regional

Complex plot

Mood/tone

First Person

Topic

*History

Weapons

War

Independence

Freedom

America/ns

American History

Rebel/Rebellion

Patriotism

*Family & Friends

Low Frequency Words

agitators	ammunition	ammunitions	anxious	college
colonies	colony	concentrating	concerned	concord
constitutes	conversation	designed	embarrassed	envied
fetched	garrison	governor's	hancock	harbor
haven	honest	hotheads	hundredweight	latch
leggings	lexington	lobst	lobsterbacks	loyalists
madmen	majesty	manage	massachusetts	massacred
mightiest	minutemen	mock	muffled	neighbor
obey	ordinary	ought	parliament	passions
patriots	peace	peppered	preach	prevail
racks	rebellion	rebellious	redding	rumors
scarlet	shoving	signalled	spoonful	taproom
tavern	tories	treas	treason	vicious
virtue	whipped	wives	worth