ollector of the port. Having arrested Leisler for treason,
the governor was a little timid about executing him, for he had never
really killed a man in his life, and he hated the sight of blood; so
Leisler's enemies got the governor to take dinner with them, and mixed
his rum, so that when he got ready to speak, his remarks were somewhat
heterogeneous, and before he went home he had signed a warrant for
Leisler's immediate execution.

[Illustration: GOVERNOR SLOUGHTER'S PAINFUL AWAKENING.]

When he awoke in the morning at his beautiful home on Whitehall Street,
the sun was gayly glinting the choppy waves of Buttermilk Channel, and
by his watch, which had run down, he saw that it was one o'clock, but
whether it was one o'clock A.M. or P.M. he did not know, nor whether it
was next Saturday or Tuesday before last. Oh, how he must have felt!

His room was dark, the gas having gone out to get better air. He
attempted to rise, but a chill, a throb, a groan, and back he lay
hastily on the bed just as it was on the point of escaping him. Suddenly
a thought came to him. It was not a great thought, but it was such a
thought as comes to those who have been thoughtless. He called for a
blackamoor slave from abroad who did chores for him, and ordered a
bottle of cooking brandy, then some club soda he had brought from London
with him. Next he drank a celery-glass of it, and after that he felt
better. He then drank another.

"Keep out of the way of this bed, Julius," he said. "It is coming around
that way again. Step to one side, Julius, please, and let the bed walk
around and stretch its legs. I never saw a bed spread itself so," he
continued, seeming to enjoy his own Lancashire humor. "All night I
seemed to feel a great pain creeping over me, Julius," he said,
hesitatingly, again filling his celery-glass, "but I see now that it was
a counterpane."

Eighty years after that, Sloughter was a corpse.

We should learn from this not to be too hasty in selecting our
birthplaces. Had he been born in America, he might have been alive yet.

From this on the struggles of the people up to the time of the
Revolution were enough to mortify the reader almost to death. I will not
go over them again. It was the history of all the other Colonies; poor,
proud, with large masses of children clustering about, and Indians
lurking in the out-buildings. The mother-country was negligent, and even
cruel. Her political offscourings were sent to rule th