senic in the flour he served to the prisoners.
It was under this man--one of those horrible natures war often brings
into use--that the young men of New York, Connecticut, and New Jersey
were to pass their miserable captivity. Soon even the English officials
were forced to take notice of the horrors of the jail in the Park. The
neighbors complained that they could get no sleep for the outcries and
groans of the prisoners. Cunningham ruled over them with lash and sword.
They were starved, reviled, beaten, "to win them," he said, "to their
duty." The chill winter and the hot summer found them crowded in their
pestilential prisons. The old Sugar-House in Liberty Street was also
under Cunningham's care. It was a tall building, several stories high,
with small windows, low ceilings, and bare walls. Every story was filled
thickly with the captured Americans. They starved, pined away, died by
hundreds. Cunningham withheld their food, and cheated even the miserable
sick and dying. They froze to death in the chill winter of 1776-77.
Sometimes the famished prisoners would come to the narrow windows of the
old Sugar-House, crying for charity to those who passed, but the
sentries drove them back. They pined away in the dark corners of the
crowded rooms, dreaming of the old homestead in Connecticut,
Thanksgiving cheer, and smiling friends. When they were brought out for
exchange, Washington wrote indignantly to Sir Henry Clinton, "You give
us only the sick and dying for our healthy, well-fed prisoners." Such
were the sorrows our ancestors bore for us. They were the authors of our
freedom. And he who treads the floors of the old Dutch Church, or seeks
out the spot where stood the Sugar-House in Liberty Street, may well
pause to think how much we owe to those who once pined within their
walls. Such, too, is war. Modern intelligence has shorn it of some of
its horrors. It may be hoped that education will at last banish it
altogether, and the people of Europe and America join to force upon
their governments a policy of peace.

ZACHUR WITH THE SACK.

A stately-looking man, wearing suspended on his left side by a strong
strap a simple gray sack, while a well-filled leather purse hung on his
right, was one day slowly wandering through the crowded bazar of Bagdad.
He remained standing before one of the stalls, and then, after a little
reflection, proceeded to purchase the largest and softest carpet
there--one of those in which the