Satanstoe | Page 8

Massachusetts Levies, in the year '12?--old Tom Watson; he that was a sub under Barnwell, in our Tuscarora expedition?"
My grandfather nodded his head in assent, that being the only reply the avocation of smoking rendered convenient, just at that moment, unless a sort of affirmatory grunt could be construed into an auxiliary.
"Well, he has a son going in this affair; and old Tom, or Colonel Watson, as he is now very particular to be called, is down here with his wife and two daughters, to see the ensign off. I went to pay the old fellow a visit, Hodge; and found him, and the mother and sisters, all as busy as bees in getting young Tom's baggage ready for a march. There lay his whole equipment before my eyes, and I had a favourable occasion to examine it at my leisure."
"Which you did with all your might, or you're not the Joe Hight of the year '10," said my grandfather, taking his turn with the ashes and the tobacco-box.
Old Hight was now puffing away like a blacksmith who is striving to obtain a white heat, and it was some time before he could get out the proper reply to this half-assertion, half-interrogatory sort of remark.
"You may be sure of that," he at length ejaculated; when, certain of his light, he proceeded to tell the whole story, stopping occasionally to puff, lest he should lose the "vantage ground" he had just obtained. "What d'ye think of half-a-dozen strings of red onions, for one item in a subaltern's stores!"
My grandfather grunted again, in a way that might very well pass for a laugh.
"You're certain they were red, Joey?" he finally asked.
"As red as his regimentals. Then there was a jug, filled with molasses, that is as big as yonder demijohn;" glancing at the vessel which contained his own private stores. "But I should have thought nothing of these, a large empty sack attracting much of my attention. I could not imagine what young Tom could want of such a sack; but, on broaching the subject to the Major, he very frankly gave me to understand that Louisbourg was thought to be a rich town, and there was no telling what luck, or Providence--yes, by George!--he called it _Providence!_--might throw in his son Tommy's way. Now that the sack was empty, and had an easy time of it, the girls would put his bible and hymn-book in it, as a place where the young man would be likely to look for them. I dare say, Hodge, you never had either bible or hymn-book, in any of your numerous campaigns?"
"No, nor a plunder-sack, nor a molasses-jug, nor strings of red onions," growled my grandfather in reply.
How well I remember that evening! A vast deal of colonial prejudice and neighbourly antipathy made themselves apparent in the conversation of the two veterans; who seemed to entertain a strange sort of contemptuous respect for their fellow-subjects of New England; who, in their turn, I make not the smallest doubt, paid them off in kind--with all the superciliousness and reproach, and with many grains less of the respect.
That night, Major Hight and Capt. Hugh Roger Littlepage, both got a little how-come-you-so, drinking bumpers to the success of what they called "the Yankee expedition," even at the moment they were indulging in constant side hits at the failings and habits of the people. These marks of neighbourly infirmity are not peculiar to the people of the adjacent provinces of New York and of New England. I have often remarked that the English think and talk very much of the French, as the Yankees speak of us; while the French, so far as I have been able to understand their somewhat unintelligible language--which seems never to have a beginning nor an end--treat the English as the Puritans of the Old World. As I have already intimated, we were not very remarkable for religion in New York, in my younger days; while it would be just the word, were I to say that religion was conspicuous among our eastern neighbours. I remember to have heard my grandfather say, he was once acquainted with a Col. Heathcote, an Englishman, like himself, by birth, and a brother of a certain Sir Gilbert Heathcote, who was formerly a leading man in the Bank of England. This Col. Heathcote came among us young, and married here, leaving his posterity behind him, and was lord of the manor of Scarsdale and Mamaroneck, in our county of West Chester. Well, this Col. Heathcote told my grandfather, speaking on the subject of religion, that he had been much shocked, on arriving in this country, at discovering the neglected condition of religion in the colony; more especially on Long Island, where the people lived in a sort of heathenish