cup of tea; and so
he formally acknowledged his error, begged the pardon of the committee,
and promised that thereafter he would act in accordance with their
rules and regulations; and his family teapot was put away upon a high
top shelf.

But the time came, in a very few years, when the American people
attended to their own taxation, and when this teapot, with all the
others in the country, could be taken down and freely used without
interference with law or conscience.

THE STORY OF A SPY.

When a nation goes to war with another, it is often necessary for the
armies on each side to leave behind some of the high and noble
principles which may have governed them at home. Of course, war is
bloody and cruel, and it almost always happens that the officers and
soldiers are obliged to descend also to meanness and duplicity in order
to succeed in their campaigns.

One strong reason for this is the necessity for the employment of spies.
It is always desirable for the commander of an army to know as far as
possible the condition of the enemy's force, and what he is doing or
intends to do. Consequently it is a common thing to send spies into the
enemy's ranks; and the better those spies can deceive the soldiers of
the other side, the more valuable will be their report, if they are
fortunate enough to get back into their own camp.

Sometimes a spy will sneak into the enemy's lines, and make his
observations in concealment and safety; but the most valuable spies are
those which enter an enemy's camp pretending sympathy and friendship. A
man who can do this well can find out a great deal.

In every army a spy from the other side is regarded as the worst of
enemies, and if captured, his punishment is death. An impartial outsider
might object to this severity, when it is considered that the army which
punishes the spy may, at the same time, have spies of its own among the
enemy. During the Revolution, Major Andre was executed because he came
into the American lines as a spy, and at the same time General
Washington was very glad to get a good spy to send into a British camp.

There was a man named John Honeyman, who acted with great success in
this capacity on the patriotic side during the Revolution. Honeyman was
a Scotch-Irishman, and was said to be a remarkably fine looking man. He
was tall, strong, extremely active, and had a fine military bearing. He
had no desire to become a soldier; but he was forced into the B