Harper's Young People, November 2, 1880

THE BOY-GENERAL

If any of my readers who live in the city of New York happen to be passing the lower end of Union Square some day, they will see, standing among the trees of the little park, a bronze statue. It is nearly opposite the corner of Broadway and Fourteenth Street, and is turned a little to one side, toward the noble statue of Washington on horseback, which is in the centre of the three-cornered space between the park, Fourteenth Street, and Union Square East. It represents a tall young man, in the close-fitting uniform of an American General of the time of the Revolution. With his right hand he clasps a sword against his breast. His left hand is stretched out toward Washington; his figure is erect, and inclined forward, as if about to spring from the prow of a boat, which the base of the statue is made to represent. This is a statue of the beloved and gallant Frenchman whom we commonly call Lafayette, whom the people of the Revolutionary days delighted to name "the young Marquis," and whose real name was Marie Jean Paul Roch Yves Gilbert Motier, Marquis de Lafayette. The story of his whole life is one of the most interesting and pleasing that has ever been written; but for the present I am to give you only the story of his services to America, and of his life during the few years in which those services were rendered. The statue that I have spoken of was set up in honor of these great services, in order that the young Americans who live in the full enjoyment of the blessings of freedom and order for which he fought may not forget him.

Lafayette was born in the province of Auvergne, France, on the 6th of September, 1757, shortly after the death of his father, who was an officer in the French army, and was killed at Minden. His own family was poor, but the death of his mother's father made him, while yet a child, very rich. As the custom was in those days in France, he entered the army while scarcely in his teens, and before he had left the Academy of Versailles, where he was educated. As was also the custom, he was married very young – while only sixteen – to a daughter of the house of Ayen and Noailles, who herself was only thirteen; but children though they were, they were possessed of strong natures, and their union was a very loving and happy one. Lafayette describes himself in boyhood as "silent because he neither thought nor heard much which seemed worth saying," and as having "awkwardness of manner, which did not trouble him on important occasions, but made him ill at ease among the graces of the court or the pleasures of a Paris supper." He was an ardent lover of freedom in the midst of an aristocratic society, and when his family wanted to attach him to the court he managed by a witty but offensive remark about the royal family to break up the arrangement. "Republican stories," he says, "charmed me," and he heard of the Declaration of American Independence with "a thrill of sympathy and joy."

He was just nineteen when, over a dinner given by an English Duke to the French officers of the garrison of Metz, he first learned of the Declaration. "My heart was instantly enlisted," he wrote, "and I thought of nothing but joining my flag." From that moment he regarded himself as a soldier in the army of American freedom. He knew his family would oppose him. "I counted, therefore, only on myself, and ventured to take for my motto cur non?" (why not?). He had great trouble in getting away. Going to Paris, he first obtained from the American agent there, Silas Deane, a promise of a commission as Major-General; but he had to keep everything very secret, to blind his family, his friends, the government – to avoid French and English spies. Only his girl-wife and two of his cousins knew what he was doing. Just as he had completed his plans, news came of the terrible defeats which Washington had suffered on Long Island and in the neighborhood of New York. The "arch-rebel," as the English called General Washington, was fleeing across the New Jersey plains, with only a handful of men, and the insurrection was believed to be nearly over. The American agent in Paris was dismayed and cast down. He told Lafayette that he could furnish him no vessel to go to America, and tried to persuade him to give up his project. Thanking Mr. Deane for his frankness, the brave young fellow answered, "Until now, sir, you have seen only my zeal; perhaps I may now be useful. I shall buy a ship which will carry your officers. We must show our confidence in the cause; and it is in danger that I shall be glad to share your fortunes." To cover his designs, he joined his uncle, the Prince of Paix, on a visit to London, where he was much courted. "At nineteen," he wrote, "I liked perhaps a little too well to trifle with the King I was about to fight, to dance at the house of the English Colonial Minister, in the company of Lord Rawdon, just arrived from New York, and to meet at the opera the General Clinton whom I was to meet the next time at the battle of Monmouth." Finally his arrangements were all made, and he came back to France to join his vessel. To his dismay, he was met by an order from the King to report, under arrest, at Marseilles. He pretended to start for that city, but on the way, disguised as a postilion, he turned aside, and after nearly being caught while sleeping on some straw in the stable of a post inn, he finally boarded his ship, with Baron De Kalb and others, and set sail for America. It was the 26th of April, 1777, "six months, filled with labor and impatience," since he had formed his plan. He was seven weeks on the sea. His ship was clumsy, and, armed with "only two bad cannon and a few muskets, could not have escaped the smallest English cruiser." Of these he encountered several, but lucky winds bore them away from him. He slipped between the ships guarding the coast, and landed in the night near the city of Charleston, South Carolina. "At last," he says, "I felt American soil beneath my feet, and my first words were a vow to conquer or perish in the cause."

He straightway set out for Philadelphia, where Congress was in session, and near which the army of Washington was encamped. The journey was long and fatiguing. From Petersburg, Virginia, he wrote to his wife: "I set out grandly in a carriage; at present we are on horseback, having broken my carriage, according to my admirable habit; I hope to write you in a few days that we have arrived safely on foot." The fatigue of the journey could not repress his constant gayety. When he reached Philadelphia, Congress was greatly bothered with foreign adventurers more anxious for rank and pay than to fight for America. Lafayette perceived the coolness of his reception, but far from being discouraged, he wrote to the President of Congress, "By the sacrifices that I have made I have a right to demand two favors: one, to serve without pay; the other, to begin my service in the ranks." Carried away by such generous devotion, Congress immediately gave Lafayette a commission as Major-General, and Washington placed him on his own staff.

O'ER THE HILLS O' ARGYLE

THROUGH THE RAPIDS WITH INDIANS

Moose Lake, August 16.

MY DEAR CHARLEY, – I've had at last the experience of a real Indian canoe voyage, of which we used to dream when we read The Young Voyageurs on the sly behind our desk at school. To begin at the beginning (which modern stories seldom do), imagine me starting from Bear Creek to descend the river in a canoe with two "real live Indians." If you want to know what Indians are like, just fancy two overfried sausages wrapped in dirty brown paper, and you'll have a perfect picture of my "noble red men," whose names sounded to me exactly like "Cock-a-doodle-doo" and "Very-like-a-whale." But you soon get used to such things in a country where names like Nomjamsquilligook and Kashagawigamog are quite every-day matters.

Now, Charley, if you value my blessing and your own welfare, never get into an Indian canoe. I ought to know something of uncomfortable conveyances, having crossed Central Asia with camels, gone a hundred miles into the Sahara in an Arab wagon, drifted over the Volga on a block of ice, and shot an Icelandic torrent in a leaky boat. But all these fall far, far short of the glorious uncomfortableness of my canoe. Louis XI. would have given any money for such an invention when he wanted to torture Cardinal Balue. I sat, and forthwith fell down on my back; I knelt, and promptly fell forward on my nose. I even tried to squat cross-legged, forgetting that Achmet Bey had spent three days in vainly showing me how not to do it when I was with him in Arabia; and how I did finally manage to stow myself I haven't found out yet. If the Indians had scolded or laughed at my mishaps, or even noticed them at all, it would not have been so bad, but their calm, silent, statuesque disapproval of everything I did made me feel as small as the first boy who breaks down at a spelling bee.

My first night was a very queer experience. Beyond the circle of light cast by our camp fire the great black shadow of the forest looked blacker and vaster than ever, and in its gloomy depths no sound was heard but the ghostly rustle of the leaves, which seemed to be whispering to each other some horrible secret. Then up rose the cold moon, glinting spectrally through the trees upon the swirling foam, and giving strange and goblin shapes to the huge trunks all around. In that dreary silence the hoarse sough of the river sounded unnaturally loud, and the wild faces of the Indians, seen and gone again by turns as the fire-glow waxed and waned, looked quite unearthly. But the mosquitoes soon gave me something else to think about, I can promise you.

For the next two days I enjoyed camp life in all its fullness – a buffalo-robe for bedding, a jackknife for dinner service, a camp fire for kitchen range, a freshly caught fish for breakfast, a water-fall for shower-bath. The very sense of existence seemed a pleasure in that glorious atmosphere, which made one feel always hungry, but never tired; and to jump into a swollen river, clothes and all, to carry the canoe a mile or more over broken ground, to start splitting wood at night-fall after voyaging all day, to get out on a wet rock at midnight and begin fishing, came quite natural. Once or twice I felt as if I must really give vent to my superfluous vitality by shouting or singing at the top of my voice, and was only deterred from striking up "I paddle my own canoe" by the reflection that I hadn't paddled it a foot since we started.

On the second day we passed several water-falls, and it was a rare sight to see the floating trees plunge over them. Sometimes a big trunk would stop short on the very brink, as if shrinking back, and then it would give a kind of leap forward, and over it would go – a regular suicide in dumb-show. A little below one of the falls the floating timber had drifted together into such a mass that it fairly blocked the channel, forming a barricade several hundred feet broad, and we had to get out and drag the canoe bodily over it as best we might. If you've ever walked over an acre of harrows piled on an acre of trucks, you'll know what kind of footing we had, and it's a marvel to me that I've got a leg left to stand on.

A little farther I espied a great shaggy beast, not unlike a bear, coming out of the river with a big fish in his mouth. I fired at him, but the bullet probably hit him too obliquely to pierce his thick hide. That's my theory at least; the Indians were mean enough to suggest that I never hit him at all.

On the third morning we came to a huge beaver dam, bigger than any I'd seen in Canada, and as neatly put together as any dike in Holland. The fur-coated gentlemen were hard at work when we appeared, some gnawing at the trees, while others plastered the dam with mud, using their broad tails for trowels. But at our coming they all went splash, splash into the water, which was all alive for a moment with dancing ripples and flapping tails – a regular fac-simile of that scene in The Last of the Mohicans over which we used to laugh so.

Of course we had to make another "portage" with the canoe; and while we were dragging it along, up jumped a barefooted boy from among the bushes, and lent us a hand with it. A splendid young savage he was, who would have quite delighted my old friend Tom Hughes of Rugby. Straight as a pine, keen-eyed as an eagle, so supple and sinewy that one might almost have rolled him up and pocketed him like a ball of twine. He told me he was "after beaver," and had done pretty well this season, trapping and what not. I gave him some tobacco, which seemed to please him mightily, and he repaid me with what my New York friends would call "a tall yarn":

"Time when beaver hats was all the go (which don't I just wish they was now!) a feller went for a swim in a river one day, leavin' his hat and things on the bank. It happened to be pretty close to a beaver dam; and when he cum out agin, fust thing he seed was two young beavers a-weepin' over his hat, 'cause they knowed it for the skin o' their father."

Toward four that afternoon we began to hear a dull booming roar far away ahead. You should have seen the Indians' eyes flash when they heard it! They knew the sound of the rapids well enough. All at once the sloping banks seemed to grow high and steep, and the overhanging pines to go far away up into the air, and the channel to get dark and narrow, and the stream to go rushing along like a mill-race. Then suddenly we swung around a huge black rock, and were fairly in the thick of it.

After that I have only a confused recollection of being tossed and banged about in a whirl of boiling foam, and clinging like grim death to the sides of the canoe, while the river itself seemed somehow to be standing stock-still, and the great cliffs on each side to be flying past like an express train. The whole air was filled with a hoarse grinding roar that seemed to shake the very sky, and the spray came lashing into my face till I was glad to shut my eyes.

When I opened them again I almost thought I was dreaming. Instead of the foaming river and the frowning precipices, we were floating on a broad smooth lake, with a little toy town pasted on the green slope above us, and half a dozen big fellows in red shirts running down to welcome us in.

But I must break off, for I'm so sleepy, after hauling timber all day, that I can hardly sit upright. Remember me kindly to all your folks, and believe me

Yours to death (or till my next railway journey, which is much the same nowadays),

D. Ker.

NEW GAMES FOR WINTER EVENINGS

Under this odd title a new and excellent game is described which is very popular in Germany, and will be equally so in America when it becomes known.

When first read it may not seem to amount to much, but it needs only to be tried to become a favorite with old and young.

Any number can play, as no skill nor practice is required, and it is adapted as well to the parlor as to the picnic. The writer has joined in it on two successive days, once in a pleasant drawing-room, with a large round table in the centre, by the cheery light of a flashing wood fire, and again under the radiant maples by the side of a beautiful lake. On the latter occasion a large shawl was spread on the ground, and a merry group of bright-eyed children, with their parents and older friends, sat around on the grass.

One of the mammas poured out from a paper package of assorted candy and small toys about as many pieces as the number of players, making the tempting heap, as nearly as possible, in the middle of the shawl within easy reach of all. After one of the children had been blindfolded, one of the ladies touched an article in the pile in the shawl, in order to point it out plainly to all excepting the one whose eyes were closed. The player then opened her eyes, and was allowed to select one at a time, and keep for her own all she could obtain without taking the "tip," or the piece that had been touched.

Often a great many pieces can be taken, and in some cases the "tip" is the last one to be pitched upon; but sometimes an unlucky player selects the "tip" first, in which case she gains nothing, for the moment she takes the "tip" she must give it up, and the turn passes to the next player on her right.

Of course all the children scream when the tip is touched, and the unlucky ones are laughed at a little, but are soon comforted by presents of candy from the stores of the more fortunate.

All who do not believe in the interest of the game are cordially advised to secure a group of children and a paper of candy, or of little presents nicely wrapped in papers, and to try it for themselves.

This new and interesting game can be played in several ways, and can be used also in connection with other old games, to which it lends a new charm. Any number of players can join, each one of whom tells the initials of his or her name, which the others can write on a slip of paper if they do not prefer trusting to memory. Each player invents an initial sentence, using the letters of one of the names. This sentence may be humorous or sensible, complimentary or the reverse, and can sometimes be made to fit exceedingly well. As specimens, a few impromptu sentences are given on the actual names of some of the original players: Easter Eggs, Exquisite Elegance, Fairy Prince, Fried Pork, Willful Negligence, What Nonsense, Serene Truth Triumphs, Saucy Tell-Tale, Goodness Brings Blessings. When all have prepared one or more sentences, the leader begins by addressing any person he pleases with a remark formed upon his initials, and each of the other players follows his example, also using the same letters. This attack is kept up indiscriminately on the person addressed by the leader, until he can answer the person who last addressed him before another of the players can say another sentence in the letters of his name, in which case the others all turn their remarks on the one who has been thus caught. The game then goes merrily on, as shouts of laughter always follow the quick conceits which are sure to be inspired by the excitement of the game. As a specimen of the way in which it can be applied to an old game, "Twirl the Platter" has a new interest when the players are called out by initial sentences, as the effort to discover one's own name in some obscure remark made by the twirler, in order to catch the platter before it ceases to spin, keeps every player on the alert.