rture from
the States in 1798.

[Footnote 1: T. Korzon, _Kosciuszko_.]

Some time in the March of that year a packet of letters from Europe was
handed to Kosciuszko. His emotion on reading the contents was so strong
that, despite his crippled condition, he sprang from his couch and
staggered without a helping hand to the middle of the room. "I must
return at once to Europe," he said to General White, with no further
explanation. Jefferson procured him a passport to France under a false
name, and then with only Jefferson's knowledge, with no word either to
Niemcewicz or to his servant, for both of whom he left a roll of money
in a drawer in his cupboard, he sailed for France. Before he embarked he
wrote out the will that he sent to Jefferson in which, more than half a
century before the war of North and South, the Polish patriot pleaded
for the emancipation of the negro slaves.

"I, Thaddeus Kosciuszko"--the text is the original English--"being just
in my departure from America, do hereby declare and direct that should I
make no other testamentary disposition of my property in the United
States thereby authorize my friend Thomas Jefferson to employ the whole
thereof in purchasing negroes from among his own as any others and giving
them liberty in my name, in giving them an education in trades or
otherwise, and in haying them instructed for their new condition in the
duties of morality which may make them good neighbours, good fathers or
mothers, husbands or wives, and in their duties as citizens, teaching
them to be defenders of their liberty and country and of the good order
of society and in whatsoever may make them happy and useful, and I make
the said Thomas Jefferson my executor of this.

"T. Kosciuszko.

"5th day of May, 1798."

There seems to have been some difficulty in the way of putting the
bequest into effect, perhaps, suggests Korzon, on account of Jefferson's
advanced years by the time that the testator was dead. It was never
carried out; but in 1826 the legacy went to found the coloured school at
Newark, the first educational institute for negroes to be opened in the
United States, and which bore Kosciuszko's name.

The secret of his movements is easily deciphered in a man of
Kosciuszko's stamp. It was the call of his country that drew him back to
Europe.

For we have reached that period of Polish history which belongs to the
Polish legions: the moment of brilliance and of glor