"You must know that this old Royalist was as crazy as a man can be.
His political misfortunes, his total downfall and ruin, had disordered
his mind. To show his contempt for what we patriots could do, he
affected to laugh at his imprisonment, at the confiscation of his
lands, the burning of his houses, and the misery to which he and his
womenfolk were reduced. This habit of laughing had grown upon him, so
that he would begin to laugh and shout directly he caught sight of any
stranger. That was the form of his madness.

"I, of course, disregarded the noise of that madman with that feeling
of superiority the success of our cause inspired in us Americans. I
suppose I really despised him because he was an old Castilian, a
Spaniard born, and a Royalist. Those were certainly no reasons to
scorn a man; but for centuries Spaniards born had shown their contempt
of us Americans, men as well descended as themselves, simply because
we were what they called colonists. We had been kept in abasement and
made to feel our inferiority in social intercourse. And now it was our
turn. It was sale for us patriots to display the same sentiments; and
I being a young patriot, son of a patriot, despised that old Spaniard,
and despising him I naturally disregarded his abuse, though it was
annoying to my feelings. Others perhaps would not have been so
forbearing.

"He would begin with a great yell--'I see a patriot. Another of
them!' long before I came abreast of the house. The tone of his
senseless revilings, mingled with bursts of laughter, was sometimes
piercingly shrill and sometimes grave. It was all very mad; but I felt
it incumbent upon my dignity to check my horse to a walk without even
glancing towards the house, as if that man's abusive clamour in the
porch were less than the barking of a cur. I rode by, preserving an