of life that involved forgetfulness of him, and for which she must reproach herself whenever she thought of him, but which was too pleasant for her to abandon.  But she had the virtue to be ashamed that reminders of his existence were unwelcome, and consequently to pretend that she took them amiably; and yet she had not the hypocrisy to pretend the eager solicitude which a devoted wife would evince upon receiving news of her long-absent soldier-husband.  Such hypocrisy, indeed, would have appeared ridiculous in a wife who had scarce mentioned her husband’s name, and then only when others spoke of him, in three years.  Yet her very self-reproach for disregarding him—­did it not show that, under all the feelings that held her to a life of gay coquetry, lay her love for Philip, not dead, nor always sleeping?

When Cornelius came to the house to live, she met him with a warm clasp of the hand, and with a smile of so much radiance and sweetness, that for a time he must have been proud of her on Phil’s behalf; and so dazzled that he could not yet see those things for which, on the same behalf, he must needs be sorrowful.

Knowing now exactly where Philip was, we were able to send him speedy news of Cornelius’s safety, and of the good health and good wishes of us all; and we got in reply a message full of thanks and of affectionate solicitude.  The transfer of his troop to New Jersey soon removed the possibility of my meeting him.

In the following Summer (that of 1779), as I afterward learned, Captain Winwood and some of his men accompanied Major Lee’s famous dragoons (dismounted for the occasion) to the nocturnal surprise and capture of our post at Paulus Hook, in New Jersey, opposite New York.  But he found no way of getting into the town to see us.  And so I bring him to the Winter of 1779, when the main rebel camp was again at Morristown, and Philip stationed near Washington’s headquarters.  But meanwhile, in New York, in the previous Autumn some additional British troops had arrived from England; and one of these was Captain Falconer.

There was a ball one night at Captain Morris’s country-house some eight or ten miles North of the town, which the rebel authorities had already declared confiscate, if I remember aright, but which, as it was upon the island of Manhattan and within our lines, yet remained in actual possession of the rightful owner.  Here Washington (said to have been an unsuccessful suitor to Mrs. Morris when she was Miss Philipse) had quartered ere the British chased the rebels from the island of Manhattan; and here now were officers of our own in residence.  ’Twas a fine, white house, distinguished by the noble columns of its Grecian front; from its height it overlooked the Hudson, the Harlem, the East River, the Sound, and miles upon miles of undulating land on every side.[4]