should smoke on this grass ere to-morrow's sunset. I would have battle
here, though none but the birds of the air were left to carry the tale
to the nation. I tell you, Colonel Leslie, a war, whose resources are
only in the popular feeling, as now, and for months to come, this war's
must be; a war, at least, which depends wholly upon the _unselfishness_
of a people, as this war does, can be kept alive by excitement only. It
was wonderful enough indeed, to behold a whole people, the low and
comfort-loving too, in whose narrow lives that little world which the
sense builds round us, takes such space, forsaking the tangible good of
their merry firesides, for rags and wretchedness,--poverty that the
thought of the citizen beggar cannot reach,--the supperless night on the
frozen field; with the news perchance of a home in ashes, or a murdered
household, and, last of all, on some dismal day, the edge of the sword
or the sharp bullet ending all;--and all in defence of--what?--an
idea--an abstraction,--a thought:--I say this was wonderful enough, even
in the glow of the first excitement. But now that the Jersey winter is
fresh in men's memories, and Lexington and Bunker Hill are forgotten,
and all have found leisure and learning to count the cost; it were
expecting miracles indeed, to believe that this army could hold together
with a policy like this. Every step of this retreat, I say again, treads
out some lingering spark of enthusiasm. Own it yourself. Is not this
army dropping off by hundreds, and desertion too, increasing every hour,
thinning your own ranks and swelling your foes?--and that, too, at a
crisis--Colonel Leslie, retreat a little further, some fifty miles
further; let Burgoyne once set foot in Albany, and the business is
done,--we may roll up our pretty declaration as fast as we please, and
go home in peace.

_Leslie_. General Arnold, I have heard you to the end, though you have
spoken insultingly of councils in which I have had my share. Will you