AN INCIDENT OF THE REVOLUTION.
It is always very noble and all that sort of thing when a nation or individuals sacrifice anything for a principle. Sometimes such sacrifice meets with immediate reward and sometimes the reward is delayed and the parties making the sacrifice have to wait indefinitely for their pay. A little incident which befel an ancestor of ours illustrates both these propositions to some extent, and having a few moments to spare we are tempted to relate it briefly, as follows.
On one memorable occasion, in-pursuance of Washington’s famous order to place none but Americans on guard, an ancestor of ours was detailed to guard certain military stores. The missiles of destruction, it will be noticed, were flying about in a style that seemed more promiscuous than soothing to a nervous temperament.
Accidents will happen in the best regulated families, and it certainly was no fault of our ancestor that a shell, fired by unprincipled Britons, struck the military stores ............