soldier than of General Benedict Arnold, the traitor. I would rather
trace my lineage to the Chevalier Bayàrd, simple knight though he was,
than to France's great Constable de Bourbon, the renegade.

So I am glad my stout grandfather was a brave and truthful gentleman--that
grandma yonder, smiling opposite, was worthy to be his wife. I do not
remember her, but she must have been a beauty. Her head is bent over one
shoulder, and she has an exquisitely coquettish air. Her eyes are
blue--her arms round, and as white as snow--and what lips! They are like
carnations, and pout with a pretty smiling air, which must have made her
dangerous. She rejected many wealthy offers to marry grandpa, who was then
poor. As I gaze, it seems scarcely courteous to remain thus covered in
presence of a lady so lovely. I take off my hat, and make my best bow,
saluting my little grandmamma of "sweet seventeen," who smiles and seems
graciously to bow in return.

All around me I see my family. There is my uncle, the captain in Colonel
Washington's troop. I do not now mean the Colonel Washington of the French
wars, who afterward became General Washington of the American
Revolution--though my uncle, the captain, knew him very well, I am told,
and often visited him at _Mount Vernon_, the colonel's estate, where they
hunted foxes together, along the Potomac. I mean the brave Colonel
Washington who fought so nobly in North Carolina. My uncle died there. His
company was much thinned at every step by the horrible hail-storm of
balls. He was riding in front with his drawn sword, shouting as the column
fell, man by man, "Steady, boys, steady!--close up!"--when a ball struck
him. His last words were "A good death, boys! a good death! Close up!" So,
you see, he ended nobly.

Beside my uncle and the rest of his kith and kin of the wars, you see,