She had a pretty little female child about four years old. The teamster was praising the child, extolling its gentleness and quietness, when the mother observed that it had been quite cross and crying all day, "I have been threatening," said she, "to give her to the Yankees." "Take care," said the wagoner, "how you speak of the Yankees, I have one of them here with me." "La!" said
the woman, "is he a Yankee? I thought he was a Pennsylvanian;—I don't see any difference between him and
other people."
I have before said that I should not narrate all the little affairs which transpired while I was on this foraging party. But if I pass them all over in silence the reader may perhaps think that I had nothing to do all winter, or at least, that I did nothing, when in truth it was quite the reverse. Our duty was hard, but generally not altogether unpleasant;—I had to travel far and near, in cold and in storms, by day and by night, and at all times to run the risk of abuse, if not of injury, from the inhabitants, when plundering them of their property, (for I could not, while in the very act of taking their cattle, hay, corn and grain from them against their wills, consider it a whit better than plundering,—sheer privateering.) But I will give them the credit of never receiving the least abuse or injury from an individual during the whole time I was employed in this business. I doubt whether the people of New-England would have borne it as patiently, their "steady habits" to the contrary notwithstanding.
Being once in a party among the Welch mountains, there came on a tedious rain-storm which continued three or four days. I happened to be at a farmer's house with one or two of the wagon-masters;—the man of the house was from home and the old lady rather crabbed; she knew our business and was therefore inclined to be rather unsociable. The first day she would not give us any thing to eat but some scraps of cold victuals, the second day she grew a little more condescending, and on the third day she boiled a potfull of good beef, pork and sour crout for us.—"Never mind," said one of the wagon-masters to me, "mother comes on, she will give us roasted turkies directly." There was a little negro boy belonging to the house, about five or six years of age,
