“These savages may indeed be a formidable enemy to your raw American militia, but upon the king’s regular and disciplined troops, sir, it is impossible that they should make any impression.”  In the first engagement his force was routed in panic, and two-thirds of them were killed, by no more than 400 Indians and French together.  This gave us the first suspicion that our exalted ideas of the prowess of British regulars had not been well founded.  Besides, from the day of their landing, they had plundered, insulted, and abused our inhabitants.  We wanted no such defenders.

After this the governor prevailed with me to take charge of our north-west frontier, which was infested by the enemy, and I undertook this military business, although I did not conceive myself well suited for it.

My account of my electrical experiments was read before the Royal Society of London, and afterwards printed in a pamphlet.  The Count de Buffon, a philosopher of great reputation, had the book translated into French, and then it appeared in the Italian, German, and Latin languages.  What gave it the more sudden celebrity was the success of its proposed experiment for drawing lightning from the clouds.  I was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, and they presented me with the gold medal of Sir Godfrey Copley, for 1753.

The Assembly had long had much trouble with the “proprietary,” or great hereditary landowners.  Finally, finding that they persisted obstinately in manacling their deputies with instructions inconsistent, not only with the privileges of the people, but with the service of the crown, the Assembly resolved to petition the king against them, and appointed me agent in England to present and support the petition.  I sailed from New York with my son in the end of June; we dropped anchor in Falmouth harbour, and reached London on July 27, 1757.

* * * * *

MRS. GASKELL

The Life of Charlotte Bronte

Elizabeth Cleghorn Stevenson, afterwards Mrs. Gaskell, was born at Chelsea on September 29, 1810.  At the age of twenty-two she married William Gaskell, a minister of the Unitarian Church in Manchester.  She became famous in 1848 on the publication of “Mary Barton,” a novel treating of factory life.  Her “Life of Charlotte Bronte,” published in 1857, caused much controversy, which became bitter, and occasioned the fixed resolve on the part of its author that her own memoirs should never be published.  This gloomily-haunting, vivid human “Life of Charlotte Bronte” was written at the request of the novelist’s father, who placed all the materials in his possession at the disposal of the biographer.  Mrs. Gaskell took great pains to make her work complete, and, though published only two years after Charlotte Bronte’s death, it still holds the field unchallenged.  Mrs. Gaskell died on November 12, 1865.

I.—­The Children Who Never Played