mshouse, wrecked and paralytic, with the memory of all
his many tongues gone, except the French. Some benevolent Wilmingtonians
approached Burr in his behalf, showing the colonel's own letter which
had introduced him to the town.

[Illustration: GRACE CHURCH.]

"I wrote that letter when I _knew_ him," said the diplomatic Colonel
Burr, "but I know him no more."

The day quickly came when Burr's speech of denial was reflected upon
himself, and those who then honored him "knew him no more."

Another French teacher, by the by, was not of Gallic race, but that of
Albion _le perfide_: this was none other than William Cobbett, with his
reputation all before him, known only to the Wilmington millers for the
French lessons he gave their daughters and the French grammar he had
published. He lived on "Quaker Hill" from 1794 to 1796. He then went to
Philadelphia, and began to publish _Peter Porcupine's Gazette_. "I mean
to shoot my quills," said Cobbett, "wherever I can catch game." With the
sinews of Wilmington money he soon made his way back to England, became
a philosopher, and sat in the House of Commons. Another British exile
was Archibald Hamilton Rowan, an Irish patriot, and one of the "United
Irishmen" of 1797. Escaping from a Dublin jail in woman's clothes, he
found his way to Wilmington after adventures like those of Boucicault's
heroes; lived here several years in garrets and cottages, carrying
fascination and laughter wherever he went among his staid neighbors; and
after some years flew back to Ireland, glorious as a phoenix, resuming
the habits proper to his income of thirty thousand pounds a year.

[Illustration: WEST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH.]

A familiar figure on the wharves of Wilmington was the gigantic one of
Captain Paul Cuffee, looking like a character in a masquerade. His
athletic limbs forced into the narrow garments of the Quakers, and a
brim of superior development shading his dark negro face, he talked
sea-lingo among the trading captains, mixed with phrases from Robert
Barclay and gutturals picked up on the coast of Sierra Leone. Captain
Cuffee owned several vessels, manned by sailors as black as shoemaker's
wax, and he conducted one of his ships habitually to the African ports.
Coming back rich from Africa, this figure of darkness has often led its
crew of shadows into port at the Brandywine mouth, passing modestly
amongst the whalers and wheat-shallops, dim as the Flying Dutchman and
mum as Friends' m