d
felon, from justice, leaving his fair young wife, with her babe in her
arms, to face the awful wrath of Washington.

[Footnote 3: A proposition has been recently made to the Fairmount
Park Commissioners by Colonel Frank W. Etting, a Philadelphia lawyer
of well-known taste and culture, to fit up the Mount Pleasant
mansion in the fashion of Colonial times, he having at his command a
sufficient quantity of furniture, pictures, china, etc. for the proper
representation of a house of the best sort in those days. It is to
be hoped that this generous offer may meet with the attention it
deserves, as such a memorial could scarcely fail to prove a great
attraction to our Centennial visitors. Mount Pleasant is fortunately
associated with the memories of better men than Benedict Arnold. The
brave Major Macpherson built the house for his own occupancy before
the Revolutionary war, and General Baron Von Steuben passed a part
of his honorable retirement there, dating his letters humorously from
"Belisarius Hall, on the Schuylkill."]

Doubtless, many a stately minuet and frolicsome country-dance has been
trod in those now dark and empty rooms by the Philadelphia belles
and beaux of 1780, when, the rich furniture all set back against the
walls, the general's blacks were had up from the negro quarters with
blaring horns and shrill fiddles to play for the quality. Alas! the
horns and fiddles sound no more, the merry, grinning players are but
a pinch of dust like their betters, their haughty master but a scorned
memory where once he reigned so royally, while the modish guests who
frisked it so gayly in satin and velvet have long, long ago shaken the
powder out of their locks, tied up their jaws and packed themselves
away in their scant winding-sheets, resigned to the mournful company
of the worm.

Brief tenure held the fair chatelaine of this castle: a year and
a half after the date inscribed upon her title-deeds the republic
claimed the traitor's possessions, and pretty Peggy was driven forth
by the Executive Council to find a home with strangers, but fourteen
days being granted her in which to prepare for her doleful journey.
Our excellent forefathers were made of stern stuff to suit the humor
of those trying times, and doubtless they did but their duty in
ridding their country of the "traitor's brood;" but for my part I can
scarcely think, even at this late day, without a pang of indignant
pity, of this innocent and forlorn young