Satanstoe | Page 8

pipe, preparatory to filling it
anew; an employment that gave him an opportunity to give vent to his
feelings, without pausing to puff.--"Ay, Master Hodge, praying and
plundering; so they go on. Now, do you remember old Watson, who
was in the 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