my countrymen.

After putting a variety of questions, as to the "old country" as he
termed Great Britain, on which I readily satisfied his curiosity, he
entered into a detail of some of the stirring events relating to the
period of his father's career in arms against the British; some of these
were of a thrilling character, and strongly depicted the miseries of
war, presenting a lamentable picture of the debasing influence of
sanguinary struggles on the human mind. The barbarous mode of harassing
the British troops, by picking off stragglers, which the lower orders of
Americans pursued, in most instances for the sake of the wretched
clothing and accoutrements of the victims, the former being dyed of a
dark colour, and sold for a dollar per set (as he called the military
suit), to the American citizen-soldiers, fairly made my blood creep; one
instance in particular filled me with horror, for it was a cold-blooded
murder of the deepest dye I must, however, do the narrator the justice
to say that he viewed the atrocity in the same light as I did.

The occurrence I am about to relate, took place somewhere on the banks
of the Hudson, below West Point, where a force of British troops were
encamped or pursuing their operations under the protection of some
vessels of war lying in the stream, he mentioned the exact spot where it
occurred, but I have forgotten it. It appeared that this force was
harassed and beset by parties of citizens, who, by pursuing a guerilla
system of warfare, surprising small parties, and firing entirely in
ambush, made great havoc amongst the rank and file of the invaders,
almost every straggler falling a victim. One evening, during this state
of things, two of the citizens, whilst prowling in a coppice, within a
few miles of the camp, on the look-out, came suddenly upon an infantry
soldier, who was off his guard at the moment, and whose firelock was
resting against a tree; the foremost of the Americans darted forward and
seized the weapon, while the second captured the wretched soldier. Under
ordinary circumstances, and in more honourable hands, the man would
have been conveyed as a prisoner of war to the American camp, but
plunder being their object, this would not answer the purpose of the
miscreants, the most resolute of whom ordered the captive (who was a lad
of seventeen or eighteen), to take off his jacket. Knowing this was a
preliminary step to his being shot, he fell on his knees and implored
m