Page:The Adventures Of A Revolutionary Soldier.pdf/184

182 on, determined not to hurry ourselves, so long as the thanksgiving lasted. We found a good dinner at a farmer's house; but I thought that both the good man and his lady looked at us as if they would have been as well pleased with our room as our company; however, we got our dinners and that was quite sufficient for us. At night we applied for lodging at a house near the road; there appeared to be none but females in the house, two matronly ladies and two misses. One of the women said she should have no objection to our staying there through the night, were it not that a woman in the house was then lying at the point of death, (I had often heard this excuse made before;) we readily perceived her drift, and, when turning to go away, one of the men told her that he did not wish to stay, "for," said he, "if old Corpus should chance to come in the dark, for the sick woman, he might in his haste mistake and take me." The woman smiled and we went on. The next house which looked as if hospitality was an inmate, I applied to and obtained admittance. Here, again, we found a plenty of thanksgiving fare. The people of this house were acquainted with numbers of the Connecticut soldiers, who had been here during the winter of '79, and made many inquiries respecting them; they seemed to have a particular regard for the Connecticut forces, as that section of the State was originally settled by Connecticut people, and it still retains the name of "the Connecticut Farms." The good man of the house would not let us depart in the morning, until we had breakfasted. We then bid our kind host farewell and proceeded on; about noon we called at a house, and while we were warming ourselves in the kitchen and chatting with the young people, the good old housewife came into the room and entered into conversation with us upon the hardships of a soldier's life; she lamented much that we had no mothers nor sisters to take care of us; she said she knew what it was, in a measure, to endure the fatigues and hardships of a camp, by the sufferings her sons had undergone in the drafted militia; they had told her how they had suffered hunger and cold, and to cap all, said she, they came home ragged, dirty and lousy as beggars. The young men, who were present, did not seem to relish the latter part of her narrative, for they leered like