Page:Scenes in my Native Land.pdf/73

Rh grandfather told them imperatively, that they must go, and without delay. The whole family gathered together, and with such preparation as might be made in a few moments, took their departure from the home of their birth, "leaving the pot boiling over the fire!" This last simple item reminds of one, with which the poet Southey deepens the description of the flight of a household, and a village, at the approach of the foe.

"The chestnut loaf lay broken on the shelf."

Another Huguenot, Henry Fransisco, who lived to the age of more than one hundred, relates a somewhat similar trait of his own departure from his native land. He was a boy of five years old, and his father led him by the hand from their pleasant door. It was winter, and the snow fell, with a bleak, cold wind. They descended the hill in silence. With the intuition of childhood, he knew there was trouble, without being able to comprehend the full cause. At length, fixing his eyes on his father, he begged in a tremulous voice, to be permitted "just to go back, and get his little sled," his favorite, and most valued possession.

A letter from the young wife of Gabriel Manigault, one of the many refugees who. settled in the Carolinas, is singularly graphic. "During eight months we had suffered from the quartering of the soldiers among us, with many other inconveniences. We therefore resolved on quitting France by night. We left the soldiers in their beds, and abandoned our house with its