ko's succour our prisoners would have died of want. Many years
later a Pole, who collected the details of Kosciuszko's American
service, fell sick of fever in Australia. An English shopkeeper took him
into his house and tended him as though he were his own--for the reason
that he was a compatriot of the man who had saved the life of the
Englishman's grandfather when the latter was a starving prisoner at West
Point.

[Footnote 1: F. Rychlicki, _Tadeusz Kosciuszko and the Partition of
Poland_. Cracow, 1875 (Polish).]

The West Point episode of Kosciuszko's career came to its end in the
summer of 1780, when he asked Washington to transfer him to the southern
army. The motive of the request was that, without having given
Kosciuszko notice, Washington had removed a number of his workmen. The
correspondence that passed between them was courteous but dry,
Kosciuszko avoiding acrimonious expressions, and simply stating that
under the present conditions he could no longer carry on the work at
West Point. The relations between the liberator of America and the
champion of Poland's freedom were, indeed, never of the nature exacted
by romance. They were confined to strict necessity, and held none of the
affection that marked the intercourse of Gates and Nathaniel Greene with
their Polish engineer. The precise reason of this is hard to fathom. It
has been ascribed to Kosciuszko's intimacy with Gates, Washington's
adversary, or, again, to Kosciuszko's extreme reserve--which latter
conjecture, in view of the warm and enduring friendships that the hero
of Poland won for himself in the New World, seems untenable.

Gates, now nominated to the command of the southern army, had at once
requested that Kosciuszko should be sent to him. "The perfect qualities
of that Pole," he wrote to Jefferson, "are now properly appreciated at
headquarters, and may incline other personages to putting obstacles
against his joining us; but if he has once promised we can depend upon
him."

Washington gave the required permission, to which Kosciuszko replied
from West Point on August 4th:

"The choice your Excellency was pleased to give me in your letter of
yesterday is very kind; and, as the completion of the works at this
place during this campaign, as circumstances are, will be impossible in
my opinion, I prefer going to the southward to continuing here. I beg
you to favour me with your orders, and a letter of recommendation to the
Board of War, as I sh