militia of the colony, I ordered the captains of the different companies to
call their men together, each Sunday at sunrise, and to drill them until
sunset; unless they would consent to repair to some convenient place, and
listen to morning and evening prayer, and to two wholesome sermons read by
some suitable person, in which case the men were to be excused from drill."
[2] I do not think this would be found necessary in New England at least,
where many of the people would be likely to prefer drilling to preaching.

But all this gossip about the moral condition of the adjacent colonies of
New York and New England is leading me from the narrative, and does not
promise much for the connection and interest of the remainder of the
manuscript.

[Footnote 1: It will be remembered Mr. Littlepage wrote more than seventy
years ago, when this distinction might exclusively belong to the _East_;
but the _West_ has now some claim to it, also.]

[Footnote 2: On the subject of this story, the editor can say he has seen a
published letter from Col. Heathcote, who died more than a century since,
at Mamaroneck, West Chester Co., in which that gentleman gives the Society
for the propagation of the gospel an account of his proceedings, that
agrees almost _verbatim_ with the account of the matter that is here given
by Mr. Cornelius Littlepage. The house in which Col. Heathcote dwelt was
destroyed by fire, a short time before the revolution; but the property
on which it stood, and the present building, belong at this moment to his
great-grandson, the Rt. Rev. Wm. _Heathcote_ de Lancey, the Bishop of
Western New York. On the subject of the _plunder_, the editor will remark,
that a near connection, whose grandfather was a Major at the taking of
Louisbourg, and who was subsequently one of the first Brigadiers appointed
in 1775, has lately shown him a letter written to that officer, during the