that I can better serve Winwood's reputation by the spilling of ink
with a quill than of blood with a sword or pistol. This consideration,
which is far from a desire to compete with the young gentlemen who
strive for farthings and fame, in Grub Street, is my apology for
profaning with my unskilled hand the implement ennobled by the use of
a Johnson and a Goldsmith, a Fielding and an Addison.

My acquaintance with the Captain's life, from the vantage of an
eye-witness and comrade, goes back to the time when all of us
concerned were children; to the very day, in truth, when Philip, a
pale and slender lad of eleven years, first set foot in New York, and
first set eye on Margaret Faringfield.

As I think of it, it seems but yesterday, and myself a boy again: but
it was, in fact, in the year 1763; and late in the afternoon of a
sunny Summer day. I remember well how thick and heavy the green leaves
hung upon the trees that thrust their branches out over the garden
walls and fences of our quiet street.

Tired from a day's play, or perchance lazy from the heat, I sprawled
upon the front step of our house, which was next the residence of the
Faringfields, in what was then called Queen Street. I believe the name
of that, as of many another in New York, has been changed since the
war, having savoured too much of royalty for republican taste.[1] The
Faringfield house, like the family, was one of the finest in New York;
and there were in that young city greater mansions than one would have
thought to find in a little colonial seaport--a rural-looking
provincial place, truly, which has been likened to a Dutch town almost
wholly transformed into the semblance of some secondary English town,
or into a tiny, far-off imitation of London. It lacked, of course, the