The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I

mily. The officers, who well knew their sometime hosts, were so well assured of this that the seniors were at once acquitted, and, regarding the girls, they were too gentlemanly to push an inquiry which might have punished a childish freak with the gravest military consequences, for, as the officer on the quest said, "Even it's being a woman would not protect the author of such a grave insult to the flag." Irrepressible as they were, in spite of the danger they had so narrowly escaped, they, not much later, stole the sword of one of the officers when they were all temporarily quartered on the preacher, and, when the island was evacuated by the British forces, brought it out and gave it to the brother, an officer in the American army.

A feat of practical housewifery, which my mother used to tell of, shows another side of the Rhode-Islander, which is not less illustrative of the stock. One of the boys of the pastor's family volunteered, or was drawn, in the militia for active service; but, as he had no cloth