For a long time afterwards the island was regarded as a place that
required purging with bell, book, and candle, for shadows were reported
there and faint lights that shot into the air, and to this day, with the
great immigrant station on it and crowds going and coming all the time,
the Battery boatmen prefer not to row around it at night, for they are
likely to see the shades of the soldier and his mistress who were drowned
off the place one windy night, when the girl was aiding the fellow to
escape confinement in the guard-house, to say nothing of Vanderscamp and
his felons.




MISS BRITTON'S POKER

The maids of Staten Island wrought havoc among the royal troops who were
quartered among them during the Revolution. Near quarantine, in an old
house,--the Austen mansion,--a soldier of King George hanged himself
because a Yankee maid who lived there would not have him for a husband,
nor any gentleman whose coat was of his color; and, until ghosts went out
of fashion, his spirit, in somewhat heavy boots, with jingling spurs,
often disturbed the nightly quiet of the place.

The conduct of a damsel in the old town of Richmond was even more stern.
She was the granddaughter, and a pretty one, of a farmer named Britton;
but though Britton by descent and name, she was no friend of Britons,
albeit she might have had half the officers in the neighboring camp at
her feet, if she had wished them there. Once, while mulling a cup of
cider for her grandfather, she was interrupted by a self-invited