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CITY WALL AND GATE SURMOUNTED BY GATE-TOWER
quietly; but at length, long before we readied the gate, a tall and powerful man, made tenfold more fierce by partial intoxication, let us know that all the militia were not so peaceably inclined, by seizing Mr. Burdon by the shoulders. He endeavoured to shake him off. I turned round to see what was the matter, and in almost no time, we were surrounded by a dozen or a score of these brutal wretches, and were being hurried on to the city at a fearful pace.
"My bag now began to feel very heavy, and I could not change hands to relieve myself. I was soon in a most profuse perspiration, and was scarcely able to keep up with them. We demanded to be taken before the chief magistrate, but were told they knew where to take us to, and what to do with such persons as we were, with the most insulting epithets. The man who first seized Mr. Burdon soon after came to me, and became my principal tormentor; for I was neither so tall nor so strong as my friend, and was therefore less able to resist him. This man all but knocked me down repeatedly, seized me by the hair, took hold of me by the collar so as almost to choke me, grasped my arms and shoulders, making them black and blue; and had this treatment continued much longer, I must have fainted.
All but exhausted, how refreshing was the remembrance of a verse, sent to me by a friend last mail,—
We speak of the realms of the blest,
That country so bright and so fair;
And oft are its glories confest,
But what must it be to be there!
