Chapter M: C. C (3)

"Never, I believe, has 'God Save the King,' been drunk with more enthusiasm or more genuine good will. Even both my oldest little daughters were there, having stayed up to see the illumination. All eyes were full of tears; and it seemed as if every one present was proud to have the spirit to venture to this in the midst of our enemies. Even the Carters could not shut their hearts against us. As soon as the company separated, we perceived that the whole house was surrounded by Americans, who, having seen so many people go into the house, and having noticed also the illumination, suspected that we were planning a mutiny, and if the slightest disturbance had arisen it would have cost us dear....

"The Americans," says the baroness, further on, "when they desire to collect their troops together, place burning torches of pitch upon the hilltops, at which signal every one hastens to the rendezvous. We were once witnesses of this when General Howe attempted a landing at Boston in order to rescue the captive troops. They learned of this plan, as usual, long beforehand, and opened barrels of pitch, whereupon for three or four successive days a large number of people without shoes and stockings, and with guns on their backs, were seen hastily coming from all directions, by which means so many people came together so soon that it would have been a very difficult thing to effect a landing.

"We lived very happily and contented in Cambridge, and were therefore well pleased at remaining there during the captivity of our troops. As winter approached, however, we were ordered to Virginia [because of the difficulty of providing provisions], and in the month of November, 1778, set out.

"My husband, fortunately, found a pretty English wagon, and bought it for me, so that as before I was enabled to travel comfortably. My little Gustava had entreated one of my husband's adjutants, Captain Edmonston, not to leave us on the way. The confiding manner of the child touched him and he gave his promise and faithfully kept it. I travelled always with the army and often over almost impassable roads....

"I had always provisions with me, but carried them in a second small wagon. As this could not go as fast as we, I was often in want of everything. Once when we were passing a town called Hertford [Hartford, Connecticut], we made a halt, which, by the by, happened every fourth day. We there met General Lafayette, whom my husband invited to dinner, as otherwise he would have been unable to find anything to eat. This placed me in rather an awkward dilemma as I knew that he loved a good dinner. Finally, however, I managed to glean from what provisions I had on hand enough to make him a very respectable meal. He was so polite and agreeable that he pleased us all very much. He had many Americans in his train, though, who were ready to leap out of their skins for vexation at hearing us speak constantly in French. Perhaps they feared, on seeing us on such a friendly footing with him, that we would be able to alienate him from their cause, or that he would confide things to us that we ought not to know.

"Lafayette spoke much of England, and of the kindness of the king in having had all objects of interest shown to him. I could not keep myself from asking him how he could find it in his heart to accept so many marks of kindness from the king when he was on the point of departing in order to fight against him. Upon this observation of mine he appeared somewhat ashamed, and answered me: 'It is true that such a thought passed through my mind one day, when the king offered to show me his fleet. I answered that I hoped to see it some day, and then quietly retired, in order to escape from the embarrassment of being obliged to decline, point blank, the offer, should it be repeated.'"

The baroness's own meeting with the king soon after her return to England, in the autumn of 1780, when the prisoners were exchanged, is thus entertainingly described: "One day when we were yet seated at table, the queen's first lady of honour, my Lady Howard, sent us a message to the effect that her Majesty would receive us at six o'clock that afternoon. As my court dress was not yet ready, and I had nothing with me proper to wear, I sent my apologies for not going at that time, which I again repeated when we had the honour of being presented to their Majesties, who were both present at the reception. The queen, however, as did also the king, received us with extraordinary graciousness, and replied to my excuses by saying, 'We do not look at the dress of those persons we are glad to see.'

"They were surrounded by the princesses, their daughters. We seated ourselves before the chimney-fire,--the queen, the princesses, the first lady of honour, and myself,--forming a half-circle, my husband, with the king, standing in the centre close to the fire. Tea and cakes were then passed round. I sat between the queen and one of the princesses, and was obliged to go over a great part of my adventures. Her majesty said to me very graciously, 'I have followed you everywhere, and have often inquired after you; and I have always heard with delight that you were well, contented, and beloved by every one.' I happened to have at this time a shocking cough. Observing this, the Princess Sophia went herself and brought me a jelly made of black currants, which she represented as a particularly good remedy, and forced me to accept a jar full.

"About nine o'clock in the evening the Prince of Wales came in. His youngest sisters flocked around him, and he embraced them and danced them around. In short, the royal family had such a peculiar gift for removing all restraint that one could readily imagine himself to be in a cheerful family circle of his own station in life. We remained with them until ten o'clock, and the king conversed much with my husband about America in German, which he spoke exceedingly well."

From England the baroness proceeded (in 1783), to her home in Brunswick, where she was joyfully received, and where, after her husband's triumph, they enjoyed together respite from war for a period of four years. In 1794, General Riedesel was appointed commandant of the city of Brunswick, where he died in 1800. The baroness survived him eight years, passing away in Berlin, March 29, 1808, at the age of sixty-two. She rests beside her beloved consort in the family vault at Lauterbach.

Her Cambridge residence, which formerly stood at the corner of Sparks Street, on Brattle, among the beautiful lindens so often mentioned in the "journal," has recently been remodelled and removed to the next lot but one from its original site. It now looks as in the picture, and is numbered 149 Brattle Street. A little street at the right has been appropriately named Riedesel Avenue. Yet even in history-loving Cambridge there is little familiarity with the career of the baron and his charming lady, and there are few persons who have read the entertaining journal, written in German a century and a quarter ago by this clever and devoted wife.

DOCTOR CHURCH: FIRST TRAITOR TO THE AMERICAN CAUSE

Very few old houses retain at the present time so large a share of the dignity and picturesqueness originally theirs, as does the homestead whose chief interest for us lies in the fact that it was the Revolutionary prison of Doctor Benjamin Church, the first-discovered traitor to the American cause. This house is on Brattle Street, at the corner of Hawthorn. Built about 1700, it came early into the possession of Jonathan Belcher, who afterward became Sir Jonathan, and from 1730 till 1741 was governor of Massachusetts and New Hampshire. Colonel John Vassall the elder was the next owner of the house, acquiring it in 1736, and somewhat later conveying it, with its adjoining estate of seven acres, to his brother, Major Henry, an officer in the militia, who died under its roof in 1769.

Major Henry Vassall had married Penelope, sister of Isaac Royall, the proprietor of the beautiful place at Medford, but upon the beginning of hostilities, this sprightly widow abandoned her spacious home in such haste that she carried along with her, according to tradition, a young companion whom she had not time to restore to her friends! Such of her property as could be used by the colony forces was given in charge of Colonel Stark, while the rest was allowed to pass into Boston. The barns and roomy outbuildings were used for the storage of the colony forage.

It is highly probable that the Widow Vassall's house at once became the American hospital, and that it was the residence, as it was certainly the prison, of Doctor Benjamin Church. Church had been placed at the head of an army hospital for the accommodation of twenty thousand men, and till this time had seemed a brave and zealous compatriot of Warren and the other leading men of the time. Soon after his appointment, he was, however, detected in secret correspondence with Gage. He had entrusted to a woman of his acquaintance a letter written in cipher to be forwarded to the British commander. This letter was found upon the girl, she was taken to headquarters, and there the contents of the fatal message were deciphered and the defection of Doctor Church established. When questioned by Washington he appeared utterly confounded, and made no attempt to vindicate himself.

The letter itself did not contain any intelligence of importance, but the discovery that one, until then so high in the esteem of his countrymen, was engaged in a clandestine correspondence with the enemy was deemed sufficient evidence of guilt. Church was therefore arrested at once, and confined in a chamber looking upon Brattle Street. Some of his leisure, while here imprisoned, he employed in cutting on the door of a closet:

"B CHURCH, JR."

There the marks still remain, their significance having after a half century been interpreted by a lady of the house to whom they had long been familiar, but who had lacked any clue to their origin until, in the course of a private investigation, she determined beyond a doubt their relation to Church. The chamber has two windows in the north front, and two overlooking the area on the south.

Church's fall was the more terrible because from a height. He was a member of a very distinguished family, and he had been afforded in his youth all the best opportunities of the day. In 1754 he was graduated at Harvard, and after studying with Doctor Pynchon rose to considerable eminence as a physician and particularly as a surgeon. Besides talents and genius of a sort, he was endowed with a rare poetic fancy, many of his verses being full of daintiness as well as of a very pretty wit. He was, however, somewhat extravagant in his habits, and about 1768 had built himself an elegant country house near Boston. It was to sustain this, it is believed, that he sold himself to the king's cause.

To all appearance, however, Church was up to the very hour of his detection one of the leading patriots of the time. He had been chosen to deliver the oration in the Old South Meeting-House on March 5, 1773, and he there pronounced a stirring discourse, which has still power to thrill the reader, upon the massacre the day celebrates, and the love of liberty which inspired the patriots' revolt on that memorable occasion. Yet two years earlier, as we have since discovered from a letter of Governor Hutchinson, he had been anonymously employing his venal pen in the service of the government!

In 1774, when he was a member of the Provincial Congress, he was first suspected of communication with Gage, and of receiving a reward for his treachery. Paul Revere has written concerning this: "In the fall of '74 and the winter of '75 I was one of upwards of thirty, chiefly mechanics, who formed themselves into a committee for the purpose of watching the movements of the British soldiers and gaining every intelligence of the Tories. We held our meetings at the Green Dragon Tavern. This committee were astonished to find all their secrets known to General Gage, although every time they met every member swore not to reveal any of their transactions except to Hancock, Adams, Warren, Otis, Church, and one or two others."

The traitor, of course, proved to be Doctor Church. One of his students who kept his books and knew of his money embarrassment first mistrusted him. Only treachery, he felt, could account for his master's sudden acquisition of some hundreds of new British guineas.

The doctor was called before a council of war consisting of all the major-generals and brigadiers of the army, beside the adjutant-general, Washington himself presiding. This tribunal decided that Church's acts had been criminal, but remanded him for the decision of the General Court, of which he was a member. He was taken in a chaise, escorted by General Gates and a guard of twenty men, to the music of fife and drum, to Watertown meeting-house, where the court sat. "The galleries," says an old writer, "were thronged with people of all ranks. The bar was placed in the middle of the broad aisle, and the doctor arraigned." His defence at the trial was very ingenious and able:--that the fatal letter was designed for his brother, but that since it was not sent he had communicated no intelligence; that there was nothing in the letter but notorious facts; that his exaggerations of the American force could only be designed to favour the cause of his country; and that his object was purely patriotic. He added, in a burst of sounding though unconvincing oratory: "The warmest bosom here does not flame with a brighter zeal for the security, happiness, and liberties of America than mine."

These eloquent professions did not avail him, however. He was adjudged guilty, and expelled from the House of Representatives of Massachusetts. By order of the General Congress, he was condemned to close confinement in Norwich jail in Connecticut, "and debarred from the use of pen, ink, and paper," but his health failing, he was allowed (in 1776) to leave the country. He sailed for the West Indies,--and the vessel that bore him was never afterward heard from.

Some people in Church's time, as well as our own, have been disposed to doubt the man's treachery, but Paul Revere was firmly convinced that the doctor was in the pay of General Gage. Revere's statement runs in part as follows:

"The same day I met Doctor Warren. He was president of the Committee of Safety. He engaged me as a messenger to do the out-of-doors business for that committee; which gave me an opportunity of being frequently with them. The Friday evening after, about sunset, I was sitting with some or near all that committee in their room, which was at Mr. Hastings's house in Cambridge. Doctor Church all at once started up. 'Doctor Warren,' said he, 'I am determined to go into Boston to-morrow.' (It set them all a-staring.) Doctor Warren replied, 'Are you serious, Doctor Church? They will hang you if they catch you in Boston.' He replied, 'I am serious, and am determined to go at all adventures.' After a considerable conversation, Doctor Warren said, 'If you are determined, let us make some business for you.' They agreed that he should go to get medicine for their and our wounded officers."

Naturally, Paul Revere, who was an ardent patriot as well as an exceedingly straightforward man, had little sympathy with Church's weakness, but to-day as one looks at the initials scratched by the prisoner on the door of his cell, one's heart expands with pity for the man, and one wonders long and long whether the vessel on which he sailed was really lost, or whether he escaped on it to foreign shores, there to expiate as best he could his sin against himself and his country.

A VICTIM OF TWO REVOLUTIONS

In the life of Colonel James Swan, as in that of Doctor Benjamin Church, money was the root of all evil. Swan was almost a fool because of his pig-headedness in financial adversity, and Church was ever a knave, plausible even when proved guilty. Yet both fell from the same cause, utter inability to keep money and avoid debt.

Colonel Swan's history reads very like a romance. He was born in Fifeshire, Scotland, in 1754, and came to America in 1765. He found employment in Boston, and devoted all his spare time to books. While a clerk of eighteen, in a counting-house near Faneuil Hall, he published a work on the African slave trade, entitled, "A Discussion of Great Britain and Her Colonies from the Slave Trade," a copy of which, preserved in the Boston Public Library, is well worth reading for its flavour and wit.

While serving an apprenticeship with Thaxter & Son, he formed an intimate friendship with several other clerks who, in after years, became widely known, among them, Benjamin Thompson, afterward made Count Rumford, and Henry Knox, who later became the bookseller on Cornhill, and finally a general in the Continental army.

Swan was a member of the Sons of Liberty, and took part in the famous Boston tea-party. He was engaged in the battle of Bunker Hill as a volunteer aid of Warren, and was twice wounded. He also witnessed the evacuation of Boston by the British, March 17, 1776. He later became secretary of the Massachusetts board of war, and was elected a member of the legislature. Throughout the whole war he occupied positions of trust, often requiring great courage and cool judgment, and the fidelity with which every duty was performed was shown by the honours conferred upon him after retiring to civil life. By means of a large fortune which fell to him, he entered mercantile business on a large scale, and became very wealthy. He owned large tracts of land in different parts of the country, and bought much of the confiscated property of the Tories, among other lands the estate belonging to Governor Hutchinson, lying on Tremont Street, between West and Boylston Streets.

His large speculations, however, caused him to become deeply involved in debt. In 1787, accordingly, he started out anew to make a fortune, and through the influence of Lafayette and other men of prominence in Paris, he secured many government contracts which entailed immense profit. Through all the dark days of the French Revolution, he tried to serve the cause of the proscribed French nobility by perfecting plans for them to colonise on his lands in America. A large number he induced to immigrate, and a vast quantity of the furniture and belongings of these unfortunates was received on board his ships. But before the owners could follow their furniture, the axe had fallen upon their heads.

When the Reign of Terror was at its height, the _Sally_, owned by Colonel Swan, and commanded by Captain Stephen Clough, of Wiscasset, Maine, came home with a strange cargo and a stranger story. The cargo consisted of French tapestries, marquetry, silver with foreign crests, rare vases, clocks, costly furniture, and no end of apparelling fit for a queen. The story was that, only for the failure at the last moment of a plot for her deliverance, Marie Antoinette would also have been on the sloop, the plan being that she should be the guest at Wiscasset of the captain's wife until she could be transferred to a safer retreat.

However true may be the rumour of a plot to bring Marie Antoinette to America, it is certain that the furniture brought on the _Sally_, was of exceptional value and beauty. It found its resting-place in the old Swan house of our picture, to which it gave for many years the name of the Marie Antoinette house. One room was even called the Marie Antoinette room, and the bedstead of this apartment, which is to-day in the possession of the descendants of Colonel Swan, is still known as the Marie Antoinette bedstead. Whether the unhappy queen ever really rested on this bed cannot, of course, be said, but tradition has it that it was designed for her use in America because she had found it comfortable in France.

Colonel Swan, having paid all his debts, returned in 1795 to the United States, accompanied by the beautiful and eccentric gentlewoman who was his wife, and who had been with her husband in Paris during the Terror. They brought with them on this occasion a very large collection of fine French furniture, decorations, and paintings. The colonel had become very wealthy indeed through his commercial enterprises, and was now able to spend a great deal of money upon his fine Dorchester mansion, which he finished about the year 1796. A prominent figure of the house was the circular dining-hall, thirty-two feet in diameter, crowned at the height of perhaps twenty-five feet by a dome, and having three mirror windows. As originally built, it contained no fireplaces or heating conveniences of any kind.

Mrs. Swan accompanied her husband on several subsequent trips to Paris, and it was on one of these occasions that the colonel came to great grief. He had contracted, it is said, a debt claimed in France to be two million francs. This indebtedness he denied, and in spite of the persuasion of his friends he would make no concession in the matter. As a matter of principle he would not pay a debt which, he insisted, he did not owe. He seems to have believed the claim of his creditor to be a plot, and he at once resolved to be a martyr. He was thereupon arrested, and confined in St. Pélagie, a debtor's prison, from 1808 to 1830, a period of twenty-two years!

He steadfastly denied the charge against him, and, although able to settle the debt, preferred to remain a prisoner to securing his liberty on an unjust plea.... He gave up his wife, children, friends, and the comforts of his Parisian and New England homes for a principle, and made preparations for a long stay in prison. Lafayette, Swan's sincere friend, tried in vain to prevail upon him to take his liberty.[9]

Doctor Small, his biographer, tells us that he lived in a little cell in the prison, and was treated with great respect by the other prisoners, they putting aside their little furnaces with which they cooked, that he might have more room for exercise. Not a day passed without some kind act on his part, and he was known to have been the cause of the liberation of many poor debtors. When the jailor introduced his pretended creditor, he would politely salute him, and say to the former: "My friend, return me to my chamber."

With funds sent by his wife, Swan hired apartments in the Rue de la Clif, opposite St. Pélagie, which he caused to be fitted up at great expense. Here were dining and drawing rooms, coaches, and stables, and outhouses, and here he invited his guests and lodged his servants, putting at the disposal of the former his carriages, in which they drove to the promenade, the ball, the theatre--everywhere in his name. At this Parisian home he gave great dinners to his constant but bewildered friends. He seemed happy in thus braving his creditors and judges, we are told, allowed his beard to grow, dressed à la mode, and was cheerful to the last day of his confinement.

His wife died in 1825, and five years later the Revolution of July threw open his doors in the very last hour of his twenty-second year of captivity. His one desire upon being released was to embrace his friend Lafayette, and this he did on the steps of the Hôtel de Ville. Then he returned, July 31, to reinstate himself in prison--for St. Pélagie had after twenty-two years come to stand to him for home. He was seized almost immediately upon his second entrance into confinement with a hemorrhage, and died suddenly in the Rue d'Échiquier, aged seventy-six. In his will, he donated large sums of money to his four children, and to the city of Boston to found an institution to be called the Swan Orphan Academy. But the estate was found to be hopelessly insolvent, and the public legacy was never paid. The colonel's name lives, however, in the Maine island he purchased in 1786, for the purpose of improving and settling,--a project which, but for one of his periodic failures, he would probably have successfully accomplished.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 9: "History of Swan's Island."]

THE WOMAN VETERAN OF THE CONTINENTAL ARMY

Deborah Sampson Gannett, of Sharon, has the unique distinction of presenting the only authenticated case of a woman's enlistment and service as a regular soldier in the Revolutionary army.

The proof of her claim's validity can be found in the resolutions of the General Court of Massachusetts, where, under date of January 20, 1792, those who take the trouble may find this entry: "On the petition of Deborah Gannett, praying compensation for services performed in the late army of the United States.

"Whereas, it appears to this court that Deborah Gannett enlisted under the name of Robert Shurtleff, in Captain Webb's company in the Fourth Massachusetts regiment, on May 21, 1782, and did actually perform the duties of a soldier in the late army of the United States to the twenty-third day of October, 1783, for which she has received no compensation;

"And, whereas, it further appears that the said Deborah exhibited an extraordinary instance of female heroism by discharging the duties of a faithful, gallant soldier, and at the same time preserved the virtue and chastity of her sex unsuspected and unblemished, and was discharged from the service with a fair and honourable character; therefore,

"_Resolved_, that the treasurer of the Commonwealth be, and hereby is, directed to issue his note to said Deborah for the sum of £34, bearing interest from October 23, 1783."

Thus was the seal of authenticity set upon as extraordinary a story as can be found in the annals of this country.

Deborah Sampson was born in Plympton, Plymouth County, December 17, 1760, of a family descended from Governor Bradford. She had many brothers who enlisted for service early in the war, and it was their example, according to some accounts, which inspired her unusual course.

If one may judge from the hints thrown out in the "Female Review," a quaint little pamphlet probably written by Deborah herself, and published in 1797, however, it was the ardent wooing of a too importunate lover which drove the girl to her extraordinary undertaking. Two copies of this "Review" are now treasured in the Boston Public Library.

In the first chapters, the author discourses upon female education and the like, and then, after a sympathetic analysis of the educational aspirations of the heroine (referred to throughout the book as "our illustrious fair"), and a peroration on the lady's religious beliefs, describes in Miss Sampson's own words a curious dream she once had.

The young woman experienced this psychic visitation, the author of the "Review" would have us believe, a short time before taking her final step toward the army. In the dream, a serpent bade her "arise, stand on your feet, gird yourself, and prepare to encounter your enemy." This, according to the chronicler's interpretation, was one underlying cause of Deborah's subsequent decision to enlist as a soldier.

Yet her mother's wish that she should marry a man for whom she felt no love is also suggested as a cause, and there is a hint, too, that the death in the battle of Long Island, New York, of a man to whom she was attached, gave the final impulse to her plan. At any rate, it was the night that she heard the news of this man's death that she started on her perilous undertaking.

"Having put in readiness the materials she had judged requisite," writes her chronicler, "she retired at her usual hour to bed, intending to rise at twelve.... There was none but the Invisible who could take cognisance of her passion on assuming her new garb."

She slipped cautiously away, and travelled carefully to Bellingham, where she enlisted as a Continental soldier on a three years' term. She was mustered into the army at Worcester, under the name of Robert Shurtleff. With about fifty other soldiers she soon arrived at West Point, and it there fell to her lot to be in Captain Webb's company, in Colonel Shepard's regiment, and in General Patterson's brigade.

Naturally the girl's disappearance from home had caused her friends and her family great uneasiness. Her mother reproached herself for having urged too constantly upon the attention of her child the suit of a man for whom she did not care, and her lover upbraided himself for having been too importunate in his wooing. The telephone and telegraph not having been invented, it was necessary, in order to trace the lost girl, to visit all the places to which Deborah might have flown. Her brother, therefore, made an expedition one hundred miles to the eastward among some of the family relations, and her suitor took his route to the west of Massachusetts and across into New York State.

In the course of his search he visited, as it happened, the very place in which Deborah's company was stationed, and saw (though he did not recognise) his lost sweetheart. She recognised him, however, and hearing his account to the officers of her mother's grief and anxiety, sent home as soon as opportunity offered, the following letter:

"DEAR PARENT:--On the margin of one of those rivers which intersects and winds itself so beautifully majestic through a vast extent of territory of the United States is the present situation of your unworthy but constant and affectionate daughter. I pretend not to justify or even to palliate my clandestine elopement. In hopes of pacifying your mind, which I am sure must be afflicted beyond measure, I write you this scrawl. Conscious of not having thus abruptly absconded by reason of any fancied ill treatment from you, or disaffection toward any, the thoughts of my disobedience are truly poignant. Neither have I a plea that the insults of man have driven me hence: and let this be your consoling reflection--that I have not fled to offer more daring insults to them by a proffered prostitution of that virtue which I have always been taught to preserve and revere. The motive is truly important; and when I divulge it my sole ambition and delight shall be to make an expiatory sacrifice for my transgression.

"I am in a large but well regulated family. My employment is agreeable, although it is somewhat different and more intense than it was at home. But I apprehend it is equally as advantageous. My superintendents are indulgent; but to a punctilio they demand a due observance of decorum and propriety of conduct. By this you must know I have become mistress of many useful lessons, though I have many more to learn. Be not too much troubled, therefore, about my present or future engagements; as I will endeavour to make that prudence and virtue my model, for which, I own, I am much indebted to those who took the charge of my youth.

"My place of residence and the adjoining country are beyond description delightsome.... Indeed, were it not for the ravages of war, of which I have seen more here than in Massachusetts, this part of our great continent would become a paradisiacal elysium. Heaven condescend that a speedy peace may constitute us a happy and independent nation: when the husband shall again be restored to his amiable consort, to wipe her sorrowing tear, the son to the embraces of his mourning parents, and the lover to the tender, disconsolate, and half-distracted object of his love.

"Your affectionate

"Daughter."

Unfortunately this letter, which had to be entrusted to a stranger, was intercepted. But Deborah did not know this, and her mind at rest, she pursued cheerfully the course she had marked out for herself.

The fatigue and heat of the march oppressed the girl soldier more than did battle or the fear of death. Yet at White Plains, her first experience of actual warfare, her left-hand man was shot dead in the second fire, and she herself received two shots through her coat and one through her cap. In the terrible bayonet charge at this same battle, in which she was a participant, the sight of the bloodshed proved almost too much for her strength.

At Yorktown she was ordered to work on a battery, which she did right faithfully. Among her comrades, Deborah's young and jaunty appearance won for her the sobriquet "blooming boy." She was a great favourite in the ranks. She shirked nothing, and did duty sometimes as a common soldier and sometimes as a sergeant on the lines, patrolling, collecting fuel, and performing such other offices as fell to her lot.

After the battle of White Plains she received two severe wounds, one of which was in her thigh. Naturally, a surgeon was sent for at once, but the plucky girl, who could far more easily endure pain than the thought of discovery, extracted the ball herself with penknife and needle before hospital aid arrived.

In the spring of 1783 General Patterson selected her for his waiter, and Deborah so distinguished herself for readiness and courage that the general often praised to the other men of the regiment the heroism of his "smock-faced boy."

It is at this stage of the story that the inevitable dénouement occurred. The young soldier fell ill with a prevailing epidemic, and during her attack of unconsciousness her sex was discovered by the attendant physician, Doctor Bana. Immediately she was removed by the physician's orders to the apartment of the hospital matron, under whose care she remained until discharged as well.

Deborah's appearance in her uniform was sufficiently suggestive, as has been said, of robust masculinity to attract the favourable attention of many young women. What she had not counted upon was the arousing in one of these girls of a degree of interest which should imperil her secret. Her chagrin, the third morning after the doctor's discovery, was appreciably deepened, therefore, by the arrival of a love-letter from a rich and charming young woman of Baltimore whom the soldier, "Robert Shurtleff," had several times met, but whose identity with the writer of the letter our heroine by no means suspected. This letter, accompanied by a gift of fruit, the compiler of the "Female Review" gives as follows:

"DEAR SIR:--Fraught with the feelings of a friend who is doubtless beyond your conception interested in your health and happiness, I take liberty to address you with a frankness which nothing but the purest friendship and affection can palliate,--know, then, that the charms I first read on your visage brought a passion into my bosom for which I could not account. If it was from the thing called LOVE, I was before mostly ignorant of it, and strove to stifle the fugutive; though I confess the indulgence was agreeable. But repeated interviews with you kindled it into a flame I do not now blush to own: and should it meet a generous return, I shall not reproach myself for its indulgence. I have long sought to hear of your department, and how painful is the news I this moment received that you are sick, if alive, in the hospital! Your complicated nerves will not admit of writing, but inform the bearer if you are necessitated for anything that can conduce to your comfort. If you recover and think proper to inquire my name, I will give you an opportunity. But if death is to terminate your existence there, let your last senses be impressed with the reflection that you die not without one more friend whose tears will bedew your funeral obsequies. Adieu."

* * * * *

The distressed invalid replied to this note that "he" was not in need of money. The same evening, however, another missive was received, enclosing two guineas. And the like favours were continued throughout the soldier's stay at the hospital.

Upon recovery, the "blooming boy" resumed his uniform to rejoin the troops. Doctor Bana had kept the secret, and there seemed to Deborah no reason why she should not pursue her soldier career to the end.

The enamoured maid of Baltimore still remained, however, a thorn in her conscience. And one day, when near Baltimore on a special duty, our soldier was summoned by a note to the home of this young woman, who, confessing herself the writer of the anonymous letter, declared her love. Just what response was made to this avowal is not known, but that the attractive person in soldier uniform did not at this time tell the maid of Baltimore the whole truth is certain.

Events were soon, however, to force Deborah to perfect frankness with her admirer. After leaving Baltimore, she went on a special duty journey, in the course of which she was taken captive by Indians. The savage who had her in his charge she was obliged to kill in self-defence, after which there seemed every prospect that she and the single Indian lad who escaped with her would perish in the wilderness, a prey to wild beasts. Thereupon she wrote to her Baltimore admirer thus:

"Dear Miss ----:--Perhaps you are the nearest friend I have. But a few hours must inevitably waft me to an infinite distance from all sublunary enjoyments, and fix me in a state of changeless retribution. Three years having made me the sport of fortune, I am at length doomed to end my existence in a dreary wilderness, unattended except by an Indian boy. If you receive these lines, remember they come from one who sincerely loves you. But, my amiable friend, forgive my imperfections and forget you ever had affection for one so unworthy the name of

"YOUR OWN SEX."

No means of sending this letter presented itself, however, and after a dreary wandering, Deborah was enabled to rejoin her soldier friends. Then she proceeded to Baltimore for the express purpose of seeing her girl admirer and telling her the truth. Yet this time, too, she evaded her duty, and left the maiden still unenlightened, with a promise to return the ensuing spring--a promise, she afterward declared, she had every intention of keeping, had not the truth been published to the world in the intervening time.

Doctor Bana had been only deferring the uncloaking of "Robert Shurtleff." Upon Deborah's return to duty, he made the culprit herself the bearer of a letter to General Patterson, which disclosed the secret.

The general, who was at West Point at the time, treated her with all possible kindness, and commended her for her service, instead of punishing her, as she had feared. Then he gave her a private apartment, and made arrangements to have her safely conducted to Massachusetts.

Not quite yet, however, did Deborah abandon her disguise. She passed the next winter with distant relatives under the name of her youngest brother. But she soon resumed her proper name, and returned to her delighted family.

After the war, she married Benjamin Gannett, and the homestead in Sharon, where she lived for the rest of her life, is still standing, relics of her occupancy, her table and her Bible, being shown there to-day to interested visitors.

In 1802 she made a successful lecturing tour, during which she kept a very interesting diary, which is still exhibited to those interested by her great-granddaughter, Mrs. Susan Moody. Her grave in Sharon is carefully preserved, a street has been named in her honour, and several patriotic societies have constituted her their principal deity. Certainly her story is curious enough to entitle her to some distinction.

THE REDEEMED CAPTIVE

Of all the towns settled by Englishmen in the midst of Indians, none was more thoroughly peaceful in its aims and origin than Deerfield, in the old Pocumtuck Valley. Here under the giant trees of the primeval forest the whitehaired Eliot prayed, and beside the banks of the sluggish stream he gathered as nucleus for the town the roving savages upon whom his gospel message had made a deep impression. Quite naturally, therefore, the men of Pocumtuck were not disquieted by news of Indian troubles. With the natives about them they had lived on peaceful terms for many years, and it was almost impossible for them to believe that they would ever come to shudder at the mere presence of redskins. Yet history tells us, and Deerfield to-day bears witness to the fact, that no town in all the colonies suffered more at the hands of the Indians than did this peaceful village in Western Massachusetts.

In 1702 King William died, and "good" Queen Anne reigned in his stead. Following closely upon the latter event came another war between France and England, a conflict which, as in the reign of William and Mary, renewed the hostilities between the French and English colonies in America. At an early date, accordingly, the settlement of Deerfield discovered that it was to be attacked by the French. At once measures were taken to strengthen the fortifications of the town, and to prepare, so far as possible, for the dreaded event.

The blow fell on the night of the twenty-ninth of February, 1704, when Major Hertel de Rouville, with upwards of three hundred and forty French and Indians, arrived at a pine bluff overlooking Deerfield meadow, about two miles north of the village--a locality now known as Petty's Plain. Here he halted, to await the appropriate hour for an attack, and it was not until early morning that, leaving their packs upon the spot, his men started forward for their terrible work of destruction. Rouville took great pains not to alarm the sentinels in his approach, but the precaution was unnecessary, as the watch were unfaithful, and had retired to rest. Arriving at the fortifications, he found the snow drifted nearly to the top of the palisades, and his entire party entered the place undiscovered, while the whole population were in profound sleep. Quietly distributing themselves in parties, they broke in the doors of the houses, dragged out the astonished inhabitants, killed such as resisted, and took prisoner the majority of the remainder, only a few escaping from their hands into the woods.

The house of Reverend John Williams was assaulted at the beginning of the attack. Awakened from sleep, Mr. Williams leaped from his bed, and running to the door found the enemy entering. Calling to two soldiers who lodged in the house, he sprang back to his bedroom, seized a pistol, cocked it, and presented it at the breast of an Indian who had followed him. It missed fire, and it was well, for the room was thronged in an instant, and he was seized, bound without being allowed the privilege of dressing, and kept standing in the cold for an hour. Meanwhile, the savages amused themselves by taunting him, swinging their hatchets over him and threatening him. Two of his children and a negro woman were then taken to the door and butchered. Mrs. Williams was allowed to dress, and she and her five children were taken captives. Other houses in the village were likewise attacked, one of them being defended by seven men, for whom the women inside cast bullets while the fight was in progress. But the attacking force was an overpowering one, and De Rouville and his men had by sunrise done their work most successfully with torch and tomahawk. The blood of forty-nine murdered men, women and children reddened the snow. Twenty-nine men, twenty-four women, and fifty-eight children were made captive, and in a few hours the spoil-encumbered enemy were en route for Canada.

Through the midwinter snow which covered the fields the poor captives marched out on their terrible pilgrimage. Two of the prisoners succeeded in escaping, whereupon Mr. Williams was ordered to inform the others that if any more slipped away death by fire would be visited upon those who remained. The first night's lodgings were provided for as comfortably as circumstances would permit, and all the ablebodied among the prisoners were made to sleep in barns. On the second day's march Mr. Williams was permitted to speak with his poor wife, whose youngest child had been born only a few weeks before, and to assist her on her journey.

"On the way," says the pastor, in his famous book, "The Redeemed Captive", "we discoursed on the happiness of those who had a right to an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens; and God for a father and friend; as also it was our reasonable duty quietly to submit to the will of God, and to say, 'The will of the Lord be done.'" Thus imparting to one another their heroic courage and Christian strength and consolation, the captive couple pursued their painful way.

At last the poor woman announced the gradual failure of her strength, and during the short time she was allowed to remain with her husband, expressed good wishes and prayers for him and her children. The narrative proceeds: "She never spake any discontented word as to what had befallen her, but with suitable expressions justified God in what had happened.... We soon made a halt, in which time my chief surviving master came up, upon which I was put into marching with the foremost, and so made my last farewell of my dear wife, the desire of my eyes, and companion in many mercies and afflictions. Upon our separation from each other, we asked for each other grace sufficient for what God should call us to."

For a short time Mrs. Williams remained where her husband had left her, occupying her leisure in reading her Bible. He, as was necessary, went on, and soon had to ford a small and rapid stream, and climb a high mountain on its other side. Reaching the top very much exhausted, he was unburdened of his pack. Then his heart went down the steep after his wife. He entreated his master to let him go down and help her, but his desire was refused. As the prisoners one after another came up he inquired for her, and at length the news of her death was told to him. In wading the river she had been thrown down by the water and entirely submerged. Yet after great difficulty she had succeeded in reaching the bank, and had penetrated to the foot of the mountain. Here, however, her master had become discouraged with the idea of her maintaining the march, and burying his tomahawk in her head he left her dead. Mrs. Williams was the daughter of Reverend Eleazer Mather, the first minister of Northampton--an educated, refined, and noble woman. It is pleasant, while musing upon her sad fate, to recall that her body was found and brought back to Deerfield, where, long years after, her husband was laid by her side. And there to-day sleeps the dust of the pair beneath stones which inform the stranger of the interesting spot.

Others of the captives were killed upon the journey as convenience required. A journal kept by Stephen Williams, the pastor's son, who was only eleven years old when captured, reflects in an artless way every stage of the terrible journey: "They travelled," he writes, "as if they meant to kill us all, for they travelled thirty-five or forty miles a day.... Their manner was, if any loitered, to kill them. My feet were very sore, so I thought they would kill me also."

When the first Sabbath arrived, Mr. Williams was allowed to preach. His text was taken from the Lamentations of Jeremiah, the verse in which occurs the passage, "My virgins and my young men have gone into captivity."

Thus they progressed, the life of the captives dependent in every case upon their ability to keep up with the party. Here an innocent child would be knocked upon the head and left in the snow, and there some poor woman dropped by the way and killed by the tomahawk. Arriving at White River, De Rouville divided his forces, and the parties took separate routes to Canada. The group to which Mr. Williams was attached went up White River, and proceeded, with various adventures, to Sorel in Canada, to which place some of the captives had preceded him. In Canada, all who arrived were treated by the French with great humanity, and Mr. Williams with marked courtesy. He proceeded to Chambly, thence to St. Francis on the St. Lawrence, afterward to Quebec, and at last to Montreal, where Governor Vaudreuil accorded him much kindness, and eventually redeemed him from savage hands.

Mr. Williams's religious experiences in Canada were characteristic of the times. He was there thrown among Romanists, a sect against which he entertained the most profound dislike--profound to the degree of inflammatory conscientiousness, not to say bigotry. His Indian master was determined he should go to church, but he would not, and was once dragged there, where, he says, he "saw a great confusion instead of any Gospel order." The Jesuits assailed him on every hand, and gave him but little peace. His master at one time tried to make him kiss a crucifix, under the threat that he would dash out his brains with a hatchet if he should refuse. But he did refuse, and had the good fortune to save his head as well as his conscience. Mr. Williams's own account of his stay in Canada is chiefly devoted to anecdotes of the temptations to Romanism with which he was beset by the Jesuits. His son Samuel was almost persuaded to embrace the faith of Rome, and his daughter Eunice was, to his great chagrin, forced to say prayers in Latin. But, for the most, the Deerfield captives proved intractable, and were still aggressively Protestant when, in 1706, Mr. Williams and all his children (except Eunice, of whom we shall say more anon), together with the other captives up to the number of fifty-seven, embarked on board a ship sent to Quebec by Governor Dudley, and sailed for Boston.

A committee of the pastor's people met their old clergyman upon his landing at Boston, and invited him to return to the charge from which he had, nearly three years before, been torn. And Mr. Williams had the courage to accept their offer, notwithstanding the fact that the war continued with unabated bitterness. In 1707 the town voted to build him a house "as big as Ensign Sheldon's, and a back room as big as may be thought convenient." This house is still standing (1902), though Ensign Sheldon's, the "Old Indian House in Deerfield," as it has been popularly called, was destroyed more than half a century ago. The Indian House stood at the northern end of Deerfield Common, and exhibited to its latest day the marks of the tomahawk left upon its front door in the attack of 1704, and the perforations made by the balls inside. The door is still preserved, and is one of the most interesting relics now to be seen in Memorial Hall, Deerfield.

For more than twenty years after his return from captivity, Mr. Williams served his parish faithfully. He took into his new house a new wife, by whom he had several children; and in this same house he passed peacefully away June 12, 1729, in the sixty-fifth year of his age, and the forty-fifth of his ministry.

Stephen Williams, who had been taken captive when a lad of eleven, was redeemed in 1705 with his father. In spite of the hardships to which he had been so early exposed, he was a fine strong boy when he returned to Deerfield, and he went on with his rudely interrupted education to such good effect that he graduated from Harvard in 1713 at the age of twenty. In 1716 he settled as minister at Longmeadow, in which place he died in 1772. Yet his manhood was not passed without share in the wars of the time, for he was chaplain in the Louisburg expedition in 1745, and in the regiment of Colonel Ephraim Williams in his fatal campaign in 1755, and again in the Canadian campaign of 1756. The portrait of him which is here given was painted about 1748, and is now to be seen in the hall of the Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association, within four-score rods of the place where the boy captive was born, and from which he was carried as a tender child into captivity.