any other man could. While erecting the batteries, etc., we could hear his voice over all other noises ringing out, "Hurrah! hurrah! my boys! Every shovelful helps build the fort." Every one near him was obliged to move, and quickly too. Few men did their country more service than this one, who took his iron back at the close of the war. The story of the escape of Arnold and the death of André is familiar to all. The Continental troops to which your father and I belonged were ordered to New Jersey, where they were stationed when Major André was executed. On the evening of this memorable day, being very sick with a fever, I was carried out of the camp, some twenty miles into the country. The army marched on toward Philadelphia, to a place called Totawsay, where they encamped. I remained where I had been carried more than thirty days, during which the fever raged continuously and I wholly lost my reason and recollection. I remained very weak and low for a long time. The old Dutchman with whom I was quartered, kind-hearted though he was, at last told my nurse that he could keep me no longer. no longer. Tired of my useless, feeble life, I did not care much what became of me; so I told the Dutchman to tackle his cart, and carry me toward the camp as far as he could in one day, and there leave me with any one who would take me in. I was then unable to walk a step without assistance, and the old man's daughter and my nurse, one on each side, were necessary to support me in the rude vehicle as we went jolting on. Night drew on, and the old man's better feelings prevailed, as he saw no prospect of finding a comfortable shelter for me. He then offered to take me back and keep me till I died, if I would go home with him; but the daughter cried and the old man begged in vain. Go back I would not. While each was trying to persuade the other, we met an officer whom I knew in search of places for the sick. I told him he must help me, and dismissed the Dutchman. It was now quite dark. I asked my friend and my nurse each of them to take an arm, and so help me on to where we saw a light through the trees a few rods from us. We reached the house after a fashion, and found the family Scotch Highlanders who had been there several years. The old man was a warm Tory, and his son as warm a Whig. They kindly took me in, and their pity for me for a while banished all party feeling. I was placed in a comfortable bed beside the old man, who prayed long and earnestly for the destruction of the rebels before he slept. The son was as noble a fellow as ever lived; saying that I should remain with them as long as I pleased. And so I did; gaining slowly till winter, when our troops went into winter quarters, our brigade moving to West Point. I was carried to a place on the North River, where I spent the winter. As I was still feeble, and my courage was failing, I concluded to resign and go home; but our colonel would not hear a word about it. He said that, if I would remain, I should be appointed paymaster of the regiment; and that my duties would then be easier, so that by spring he thought I would fully recover my health. Your father, too, said that he would not consent to my leaving him. He said we had commenced together, and we would tough it out to the end, let that be what it might. I consented to remain, and was appointed paymaster and clothier, while your father was made quartermaster. I at length, before spring, became perfectly well. My sickness, and that of others. while in New Jersey, arose from want of proper food and attendance. The army was obliged to use green corn and fruit instead of bread. But our sickness and sufferings were nothing to what some portions of our army endured. I shall never forget the condition of several hundred, if I remember rightly, of Hazen's regiment, sent on from Valley Forge while we were at West Point. Those that came to winter with us arrived just as we had used the last of our clothing to make ourselves comfortable for the season. They came in the morning, hungry and ragged. A more wretched set of men were rarely seen. Before night each of our soldiers had hunted up his old stockings, shoes, and other clothing, patched and mended them, and thus made the destitute comfortable. In the spring of 1781, I think it was, our troops marched down to White Plains and formed an encampment. While here we were amused by an order that was said to come from General Heath; but, as we all knew Washington's abhorrence of the sin of profanity, we easily guessed where it originated. Our paradeground was being cleared with great difficulty. The order was, that the first one who was heard to utter an oath should dig up by the roots one of the pitch-pine stumps which were being removed. This was no easy matter. Not long after a soldier was seen sweating and toiling away at one of these stumps, exclaiming that he was paying too dearly; that it would be the last stump that he would dig. His Speaking of Washington's dislike of profane habits reminds me of a scene at his own table, on an occasion when twenty or more officers had been invited to dine with him. habit was, to take a single glass of wine after dinner and retire, leaving us to ourselves; as he, at this time of care and anxiety, rarely made any conversation except on business. We had finished our dinner, and Washington had taken his wine in his hand, when a young officer from New Hampshire at the end of the table, who had long been in the habit of using profane language, being much engaged, forgot where he was and swore an oath. Then we heard a rap on the table, and Washington, setting down his untasted wine, arose and said: "Gentlemen, when I invited you here, it was my intention to invite gentlemen only. I am sorry to add, that I made a mistake." Then he left the room. A dead silence reigned for some time, which was broken by the offender himself calling us all to witness, that the oath he had uttered should be his last. He added that he would rather have been shot through the heart than to have deserved the reproof from Washington. Such was our love and reverence for the great and good man that the most profane left off the habit, and it was done away among us before the close of the war. While we were at White Plains, Count Rochambeau, with the French troops, encamped on our left. They remained til September, when, with a part of the American army, they marched with all speed to Yorktown. The capture of Cornwallis and its consequences are known to every American; though very few can now realize the joy and gratitude which that event caused every heart to feel. In 1782 the principal part of the Northern Army moved to Newburg, and there, having built ourselves huts, we remained till peace was declared. At Newburg we passed the pleasantest part of our army life, though we had many pleasant days, as well as sad ones, at West Point. Our great ball on the birth of the Dauphin of France we thought a very fine affair. The bower built for a hall, neatly turfed and covered with evergreens, was about twenty feet wide and a quarter of a mile long. The ball was opened by General Washington and Mrs. Knox. The music was said to be very good. Of the song, or chorus, I recollect but little. It began as follows: "A Dauphin's born! Let cannon loud Bid echo rend the sky! Long life to Gallia's [noble?] king, Cannon from every hill-top sent forth their answering notes. To show the lack of the common necessaries of life, I mention the fact, that, on this occa sion, orders came with the invitations, for each one bidden to bring his plate, knife and fork; all of which articles were very scarce. I have known our foreign friends, who were accustomed to dine off silver, for months together to eat from a clean chip instead of a plate. Colonel Lutterlow, a German, I think, by birth, an officer of distinction in his own country, put up with our fare with the utmost cheerfulness. I knew him well, and loved and respected him before he leit us. After the close of the war he invited several of us to dine with him. After the toasts, when we had drunk all we wished, and more, perhaps, than was necessary, he rose and said: "Before I take my leave of you, I offer this, which I wish you all to remember. Here's to our noble selves! Yes, I repeat; you must respect yourselves." This was the last we saw of him, as he returned to his country immediately. He was very intelligent, and very much of a gentleman. The lack of the common conveniences was sometimes curiously supplied by our soldiers by the manufacture of wooden spoons, bowls, plates, etc. I recollect the manufacture of a dripping-pan which pleased us very much. Some person in Massachusetts had a very large ox, which he fatted very carefully and presented to Washington for his own table. The General divided it among the officers then at West Point, so that a piece or two fell to each mess. Ours was a fine roasting piece, which we were hesi tating to have made into soup, our usual method of cooking beef, when a soldier by the name of Skelden said that he would contrive a way to roast it by hanging it before the fire. He was told we could not afford to lose the gravy; whereupon he ran out a little distance and returned with a smooth flat stone, which he quickly cleaned. Then he took a roll of dough and laid it neatly round the stone, carefully turning the whole to let the edge bake while it caught the gravy. Afterwards whatever was done quickly and well was "equal to Skelden's dripping-pan." I should have mentioned that I was chosen agent to settle the accounts of the 5th Massachusetts Regiment and a part of the 10th and the 15th. After close attention to the business for six months, I had the accounts adjusted and balanced, ready to be presented to the paymaster-general; which was done without loss of time. He informed me that it would be impossible for him to go through the examination of all the accounts and give the necessary certificates in less time than six months. This was a great disappointment to me as I was very impatient to return home, having been there but once during my service. So many officers had wives and families to visit, when they could be spared, that I had felt it my duty to remain. However, being constantly employed, the time passed more pleasantly and quickly than I thought possible. I completed my business and once more set my face toward home; which I reached in safety. No one will doubt that, after the absence of six or seven years, this was a pleasant time to me. The next thing to be done was, to pay the officers and soldiers the balance due them. As the regiment was raised in different parts of the state, I thought it most convenient to meet the men in different towns. I accordingly advertised in the Boston Centinel, that I would meet them in Petersham, Northampton, Worcester, Harvard, Danvers, Boston, and Wrentham at a time set. This was expensive for me, but very convenient for them; and the pleasure it gave me to see so many of my old friends amply repaid me for all my trouble. The feelings of the officers and soldiers at parting from each other, after so long and interesting a connection, I shall not attempt to describe. E NGLAND is a land of large towns and great manufactories. So dense is the population that it is said the crops raised on the farms each year would not feed the inhabitants over three months. From this one might fancy that the towns had overspread most of the island and that all the country there was left would be hardly more rural than village suburbs. But in reality the towns are only the plums in the pudding, not the substance. They are minor interruptions to an endless roll of cultivated fields and grazing lands sweeping from John o' Groat's to Land's End. Even London, vast as it is, does not reach out so very far, after all. You step on a train at any of the metropolitan stations and go in whatever direction you please, and it does not take many minutes to get beyond the paved ways and the crowded buildings to the quiet greenery of the country. Nor do the towns, in spite of their number and size, have any very marked influence on the country people and their ways. One would think they would exert a decided leavening power over the rustic life that would modernize it and cause its cruder elements to disappear. This is not the case. The country workers of England know far less of the cities and feel their influence far less than their fellows here in America. Their instincts are less nomadic. They live out their lives in the villages where they are born. A few miles close around home is often all they see of the world. They cling to old ways and are primitive and unchanging to a degree that an American mind finds astonishing. As a result, each district has its dialect and its peculiar local customs which survive generation after generation, but never are transferred to other regions, not even to those adjoining. The soil of Britain is not tilled by the owners, nor is the tilling to any considerable extent done under their supervision. The land is practically all owned by the gentry, and they rent it to farmers, who take the entire responsibility of making it return both them and their landlords a living. The tenants decide what crops to raise, they buy and sell, and they keep what is often quite a little colony of laborers constantly at work. The laborers are at the foot of the industrial ladder and are so dependent on their weekly wages that any interruption which throws them out of work even temporarily brings direfully close the possibility of having to go to the workhouse. Happily things are so arranged that labor on the farms is steady through the year and a helper is never laid off on account of either weather or season. The daily life of the worker is one of set hours, which are as definite as those of an employee in a factory. If those that are released from the carts tramp on to their stables, where they are unharnessed and fed and groomed. This done, the day's work of the carters and the followers of the plough is finished. The soil in some parts is so heavy that four horses are the rule to each plough. The ploughman does not in this case attempt to guide his own team, but has a boy to walk along beside the horses and urge them on. These boys earn their wages, I think, for they keep shouting to their teams all the time, adding emphasis by an occasional crack of the whip. How a man works overtime, it is by agreement, and he gets extra pay. Of all the laborers on a farm, the ploughmen and carters are the earliest risers. They have to be up at four o'clock to feed their horses, though they are not in the fields to begin work till half-past six. About the middle of the afternoon they all return to the farmhouse, the carters in their carts and the ploughmen and ploughboys mounted sidesaddle on their horses, which go clanking along in single file till they reach the farmyard gate; then the riders slide off, and their horses with ever, the shouts and the belaboring with the lash seem purely matters of form, and the horses step along perfectly oblivious to them, so far as I could see. In former days much of the heavy farm work was done with bullocks. Now, a bullock team is comparatively rare. Nothing could be more picturesque. The oxen, instead of wooden neck-yokes, wear simple harnesses made of broad leather bands, and each creature has on a pair of great leather blinders which give it a look truly antediluvian. As it takes four bullocks to one plough, they, with the |