Page:Nye's History of the USA.djvu/92

88 His room was dark, the gas having gone out to get better air. He attempted to rise, but a chill, a throb, a groan, and back he lay hastily on the bed just as it was on the point of escaping him. Suddenly a thought came to him. It was not a great thought, but it was such a thought as comes to those who have been thoughtless. He called for a blackamoor slave from abroad who did chores for him, and ordered a bottle of cooking brandy, then some club soda he had brought from London with him. Next he drank a celery-glass of it, and after that he felt better. He then drank another.

"Keep out of the way of this bed, Julius," he said. "It is coming around that way again. Step to one side, Julius, please, and let the bed walk around and stretch its legs. I never saw a bed spread itself so," he continued, seeming to enjoy his own Lancashire humor. "All night I seemed to feel a great pain creeping over me, Julius," he said, hesitatingly, again filling his celery-glass, "but I see now that it was a counterpane."

Eighty years after that, Sloughter was a corpse. We should learn from this not to be too hasty in selecting our birthplaces. Had he been born in America, he might have been alive yet.

From this on the struggles of the people up to the time of the Revolution were enough to mortify the reader almost to death. I will not go over