ences of his grandfather; that worthy whom "King
George was not rich enough to buy," although, as he himself modestly
admitted, he was "_not worth purchasing_:"
The writer of this paragraph had an opportunity, very many years since,
when Mr. Reed was a student of the Pennsylvania University, of becoming
somewhat intimately acquainted with his bent of mind; and if there ever was
a school-boy despised and detested by his fellows, William was that youth.
"The boy's the father of the man," and those who have known him only in his
ripened years, if they apply the truth of this axiom, will have no
difficulty in correctly conjecturing what must have been his early youth.
Even then his predominant weakness was to almost daily, and by the hour,
expatiate upon the merits of his _great_ "grandfather," and to entertain
boys, smaller and younger than himself, with the revolutionary
exploits--more numerous and diversified far than those with a narration of
which Othello beguiled the fair Desdemona, performed by that distinguished
personage: and in particular, how "the General" had repulsed the proffered
bribe of the Treasury of Great Britain, and his pick and choice of the most
lucrative office in the Colonies.
Down to this day, this has continued to be the habit of Mr. Reed; and to
such an extent has he indulged it, that he has become the butt and laughing
stock of his acquaintance.
"O, wad some Pow'r the giftie gie us
To see oursels as others see us!
It wad frae manie a blunder free us,
An foolish notion!"
The extraordinary pains taken by Mr. Reed, to circulate the notion of his
grandfather's more than Roman patriotism, would, of itself, be a
circumstance calculated to induce suspicion of their being "something
rotten in Denmark;" but, fortunately for the truth of history, the _proofs_
of General Reed's treachery and meditated "treason," [TN](if not _actual_
treason, are extant--and the veteran, to whom in my last I referred, will,
in due time, give them to the world. The descendants of General Reed have
succeeded long enough in imposing upon the American people, as a patriot
and a hero of the "times that tried men's souls," a wretch, who, in the
emphatic language of General Washington, spoke in his presence and hearing,
"wanted but a price and an opportunity to play us false as Arnold!" who,
while his fellow soldiers were stinted of food and scant of clothing, was
in actual treaty with t
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