Anonymous
Published: 2013-09
Total Pages: 64
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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1891 edition. Excerpt: ... A PRIVATE LETTER FROM NEW ENGLAND, NOV. 15, 1777, TO OCT. 10, 1778.* Cambridge, Mass., Nov. 15, 1777. My Dear Friends: At last we have arrived at Cambridge, where we poor unfortunates can claim neither to be free nor captives. If I were to write and tell you that every thing is as it should be here I would be stating a base falsehood. However, if I wished to excite your sympathy to the highest pitch by my complaints, I fear I should afterward regret the tears I should cause to flow. The Americans, who, for politeness sake, are no longer termed Rebels or Yankees, are very often unable to determine to which class of people in * As is well known, Burgoyne's defeat at Saratoga changed the whole complection of affairs for the colonists. This great event is here described even to the most minute details by an eye-witness, who has the great faculty of making the reader imagine himself an eye-witness of these stirring events.--Note by Schlozer. their state we properly belong.* It is true that we are somewhat confined. As a matter of fact, we are allowed a well defined circle, the bounds of which we are not to overstep under penalty of being sent to the prison-ship or shot. We, however, make the most of the little liberty we possess in our villages of palisades, and now and then play the gentleman among our conquerers. You are doubtless very anxious to know exactly how we arrived at the High School of Cambridge where the students live in the well-built Collegia Harvardino; attend college in comical-looking dressinggowns, and are summoned three times daily to breakfast, dinner, and supper, by the sound of a bell. Paper and ink, however, are too dear in this place, to go into minute details of occurrences from the 1st of September up to the present...