ed the flames sweep
through the year's harvest. Then, hurrying to the house, she gathered
up her most valuable possessions, hastened away over the dangerous road,
and reached Albany in safety.

Within a few hours Burgoyne and his officers were making merry in the
great house, drinking the Schuyler wine, and on the following day the
mansion was burned to the ground. But fate played the British leader a
curious trick; for within a few days Burgoyne found himself defeated and
a guest in the Schuyler home at Albany. "I expressed my regret," he has
testified, "at the event which had happened and the reasons which had
occasioned it. He [Schuyler] desired me to think no more about it; said
the occasion justified it, according to the rules and principles of war,
and he should have done the same."[311]

As Chastellux declared: "Burgoyne was extremely well received by Mrs.
Schuyler and her little family. He was lodged in the best apartment in
the house. An excellent supper was served him in the evening, the honors
of which were done with so much grace that he was affected even to
tears, and could not help saying with a deep sigh, 'Indeed, this is
doing too much for a man who has ravished their lands and burnt their
home."[312] Indeed, all through his stay in this house he and his staff
of twenty were treated with the utmost courtesy by Catherine Schuyler.

But was not this characteristic of so many of those better class
colonial women? The inherent delicacy, refinement, and tact of those
dames of long ago can be equalled only by their courage, perseverance,
and loyalty in the hour of disaster. Whether in war or in peace they
could remain calm and self-possesed, and when given opportunity showed
initiative power fully equalling that of their more famous husbands.
They could be valiant without losing refinement; they could bid defiance
to the enemy and yet retain all womanliness.

Is it not evident that woman was charmingly feminine, even in colonial
days? Did she not possess essentially the same strengths and weaknesses
as she does to-day? In general, accepting creeds more devoutly than did
the men, as is still the case, often devouring greedily those writings
which she thought might add to her education, yet more closely attached
to her home than most modern women, the colonial dame frequently
represented a strange mingling of superstition, culture, and delicate
sensibility. Possessing doubtless a more whole-hearted reverence