with the young people of the house.

One of the manors that he frequented was that of Michal Zaleski, a legal
and political functionary of some importance in Lithuania. With him and
his wife Kosciuszko contracted a lasting friendship.

[Footnote 1: _op. cit_.]

[Footnote 2: _Ibid_.]

"I will begin"--so runs a letter of his to Mme. Zaleska--"first of all
by reproaching your ladyship for not having added even one word to the
letter"--presumably her husband's. "A fine way of remembering your
neighbour! So I have only got to hurry home to be forgotten by my
friends! I will forbid any more of my water to be given to you, and will
entirely prohibit my well; so you will have to drink from your own, made
badly by your husband. I lay my curse on your ladyship and will show you
no mercy; and if I should be in the church on Good Friday you would most
certainly be denied absolution for your great and heinous sins. However,
I kiss your hands, and be both of you convinced of the enduring respect
and esteem with which I desire to be your humblest servant."[1]

"Oh, would that I could obtain such a wife!" he writes to the husband.
"She is an example for thousands--how to find happiness at home with
husband and children. What month were you born in? If my birthday were
in the same month, then I too might venture to marry."[2]

[Footnote 1: T. Korzon, _Kosciuszko_.]

[Footnote 2: _Letters of Kosciuszko_.]

Although Kosciuszko lived far from the turmoil of publicity and out of
the reach of events, his thoughts, as we know from his letters and from
rough notes that exist in his handwriting, were much taken up with the
crisis through which his country was passing. He pondered much upon the
means of her preservation. His correspondence with Michal Zaleski
insists upon the necessity for Poland of national self-consciousness and
confidence in her own destiny. Education for the masses, a citizen army
of burghers and peasants, were two of the reforms for which Kosciuszko
most earnestly longed, and in which, in advance of his epoch, he saw a
remedy for crying evils. It was a moment when the attention of
thoughtful men was riveted on great national problems, for the famous
Diet was now sitting that from 1788 to 1791 was engaged in the task of
framing for Poland the enlightened Constitution that, were it not for
the armies of Prussia and Russia, would have saved her. One of its early
enactments was the remodelling of the Polish army. Kosc