for the better purpose of
paying a special visit to this lady. It is said that whilst engaged in
urging his suit the enemy were quietly surrounding his quarters; he
had barely received his final dismissal from Mrs. Babcock when he was
startled by the firing of musketry.... It appears that all the roads
and bridges had been well guarded by the enemy, except the one now
called Warner's Bridge, and that Captain John Odell upon the first
alarm led off his troops through the woods on the west side of the Saw
Mill [River]. Here Colonel Gist joined them. In the meantime Mrs.
Babcock, having stationed herself in one of the dormer windows of the
parsonage, aided their escape whenever they appeared, by the waving of
a white handkerchief."

The British attack was under Lieutenant-Colonel Simcoe, whose journal
shows that his force so far outnumbered Gist's that the latter's only
sensible course was in flight. About the year 1840, trees cut down
near the site of Gist's camp were found to contain balls buried six
inches in the wood.

NOTE 3. (Page 76.)

The three generals arrived on the _Cerberus_, May 25th. All the
histories say that they arrived "with reinforcements." It is true,
troops were constantly arriving at Boston about that time, but none
came immediately with the three generals. The _Connecticut Gazette_
(published in New London) printed, early in June, this piece of news,
brought by a gentleman who had been in Boston, May 28th: "Generals
Burgoyne, Clinton, and Howe arrived at Boston last Friday in a
man-of-war. No troops came with them. They brought over 25 horses." It
is a wonder that Frothingham, in his admirably complete history of the
siege of Boston, missed even this little circumstance. Probably
everybody has read the incident thus related by Irving: "As the ships
entered the harbor and the rebel camp was pointed out, Burgoyne could
not restrain a burst of surprise and scorn. 'What!' cried he; 'ten
thousand peasants keep five thousand King's troops shut up! Well, let
us get in and we'll soon find elbow room!'" I don't think Irving
relates anywhere the sequel, which is that when, after his surrender,
Burgoyne marched with his conquered army into Cambridge, an old woman
shouted from a window to the crowd of spectators, "Give him elbow
room!" This story ought to be true, if it is not.

NOTE 4. (Page 89.)

It was in a letter under date of October 4, 1778, that Washington
wrote: "What officer can bear the wei