the change was very much for the better. I had a feeling myself, on
first being presented to my new young mistresses, of a distressing
sort. Having always, up to the completion of my sixth year, been a
privileged pet, and almost, I might say, ranking amongst the sanctities
of the household, with all its female sections, whether young or old,
(an advantage which I owed originally to a long illness, an ague,
stretching over two entire years of my infancy,) naturally I had learned
to appreciate the indulgent tenderness of women; and my heart thrilled
with love and gratitude, as often as they took me up into their arms
and kissed me. Here it would have been as every where else; but,
unfortunately, my introduction to these young women was in the very
worst of characters. I had been taken in arms--in arms against their
own brothers, cousins, sweethearts, and on pretexts too frivolous to
mention. If asked the question, it would be found that I should not
myself deny the fact of being at war with their whole order. What was
the meaning of _that_? What was it to which war pledged a man? It
pledged him, in case of opportunity, to burn, ravage, and depopulate
the houses and lands of the enemy; which enemy was these fair girls.
The warrior stood committed to universal destruction. Neither sex nor
age, neither the smiles of unoffending infancy nor the gray hairs of
the venerable patriarch, neither the sanctity of the matron nor the
loveliness of the youthful bride, would confer any privilege with the
warrior, consequently not with me.

Many other hideous features in the military character will be found
in books innumerable--levelled at those who make war, and therefore
at myself. And it appears finally by these books, that, as one of my
ordinary practices, I make a wilderness, and call it a pacification;
that I hold it a duty to put people to the sword; which done, to plough
up the foundations of their hearths and altars, and then to sow the