ica as a market for their own
trade. Thereupon his fellow officers would either laugh him out,
as if he were too ignorant to be argued with, or freeze him out,
as if he had committed some grave outrage on decorum. And Harry would
rage inwardly, comparing his own ignorance and indecorousness with the
knowledge and courtesy exemplified in the assertion of Doctor Johnson,
when that great but narrow Englishman said, in 1769, of Americans,
"Sir, they are a race of convicts, and ought to be thankful for
anything we allow them short of hanging."

There came to Harry, now and then, scraps of vague talk of uneasiness
in Boston Town, whose port the British Parliament had closed, to
punish the Yankees for riotously destroying tea on which there was a
tax; of the concentration there of British troops from Halifax,
Quebec, New York, the Jerseys, and other North American posts. But
there was not, in Harry's little world of Irish garrison life, the
slightest expectation of actual rebellion or even of a momentous local
tumult in the American Colonies.

Imagine, therefore, his feelings when, one morning late in March in
1775, he was told that, within a month's time, the Sixty-third, and
other regiments, would embark at Cork for either Boston or New York!

There could not be a new French or Spanish invasion. As for the
Indians, never again would British regulars be sent against them. Was
it, then, Harry's own countrymen that his regiment was going to
fight?

His comrades inferred the cause of his long face, and laughed. He
would have no more fighting to do in America against the Americans
than he had to do in Ireland against the Irish, or than an English
officer in an English barrack town had to do against the English. The
reinforcements were being sent only to overawe the lawless element.
The mere sight of these reinforcements would obviate any occasion for
their use. The regiment would merely do garrison duty in America
instead of in Ireland or elsewhere.

He had none to advise or enlighten him. What was there for him to do
but sail with his regiment, awaiting disclosures or occurrences to
guide? What misgivings he had, he kept to himself, though once on the
voyage, as he looked from the rocking transport towards the west, he
confided to Lieutenant Dalrymple his opinion that 'twas damned bad
luck sent _his_ regiment to America, of all places.

When he landed in Boston, June 12th, he found, as he had expected,
that the town was