liar gift for
removing all restraint that one could readily imagine himself to be in a
cheerful family circle of his own station in life. We remained with them
until ten o'clock, and the king conversed much with my husband about
America in German, which he spoke exceedingly well."

[Illustration: RIEDESEL HOUSE, CAMBRIDGE, MASS.]

From England the baroness proceeded (in 1783), to her home in
Brunswick, where she was joyfully received, and where, after her
husband's triumph, they enjoyed together respite from war for a period
of four years. In 1794, General Riedesel was appointed commandant of the
city of Brunswick, where he died in 1800. The baroness survived him
eight years, passing away in Berlin, March 29, 1808, at the age of
sixty-two. She rests beside her beloved consort in the family vault at
Lauterbach.

Her Cambridge residence, which formerly stood at the corner of Sparks
Street, on Brattle, among the beautiful lindens so often mentioned in
the "journal," has recently been remodelled and removed to the next lot
but one from its original site. It now looks as in the picture, and is
numbered 149 Brattle Street. A little street at the right has been
appropriately named Riedesel Avenue. Yet even in history-loving
Cambridge there is little familiarity with the career of the baron and
his charming lady, and there are few persons who have read the
entertaining journal, written in German a century and a quarter ago by
this clever and devoted wife.

DOCTOR CHURCH: FIRST TRAITOR TO THE AMERICAN CAUSE

Very few old houses retain at the present time so large a share of the
dignity and picturesqueness originally theirs, as does the homestead
whose chief interest for us lies in the fact that it was the
Revolutionary prison of Doctor Benjamin Church, the first-discovered
traitor to the American cause. This house is on Brattle Street, at the
corner of Hawthorn. Built about 1700, it came early into the possession
of Jonathan Belcher, who afterward became Sir Jonathan, and from 1730
till 1741 was governor of Massachusetts and New Hampshire. Colonel John
Vassall the elder was the next owner of the house, acquiring it in 1736,
and somewhat later conveying it, with its adjoining estate of seven
acres, to his brother, Major Henry, an officer in the militia, who died
under its roof in 1769.

Major Henry Vassall had married Penelope, sister of Isaac Royall, the
proprietor of the beautiful place at Medford, but upon the b