His splendid health, his imperturbable good humor, his happy mixture of audacity and prudence, and his perfect knowledge of the British people, enabled him to emerge triumphantly from difficulties which would have crushed a better and greater

man.

BENEDICT ARNOLD-NEW LIGHT.

WHO would have thought of looking into the autobiography of Mrs. Sigourney for information respecting Benedict Arnold? These two names represent the extremes of human nature; for Mrs. Sigourney was one of the best of women, and Arnold was one of the worst of men. Nevertheless, the two names will henceforth be often printed in the same sentence, and mentioned in the same breath.

One hundred years ago, in the town of Norwich, Connecticut, there lived a certain Daniel Lathrop, physician and druggist. His business was so flourishing and extensive as to require the services of several clerks and apprentices, who, according to the custom of the time, lived in the family of their employer. One of his apprentices was a poor widow's son, named Benedict Arnold, and another was Ezekiel Huntley, who became, in due time, the father of Lydia Huntley, afterwards Mrs. Sigourney. It is in this way that the name of the gentle poetess is associated with that of the fierce, malignant traitor. Having been in the habit of hearing her father talk of Arnold, and having herself, during her childhood and youth, resided in the old Lathrop mansion with Mrs. Lathrop, she naturally records what she was accustomed to hear of him. Her father had in his possession several of Arnold's school-books, of which she particularly remembered a Dilworth's Grammar and an Arithmetic, which were disfigured in many places by the name of Benedict Arnold, scrawled carelessly through the middle of valuable pages. Sometimes, she says, the names were accompanied by boyish drawings, of an extremely hideous character; and she truly remarks, that, in that frugal and well-disciplined age, it must have required some audacity thus to misuse highly valuable

property, and which, indeed, had an almost sacred character in New England.

The family of Dr. Daniel Lathrop was among the most respectable in Connecticut. The doctor himself had been regularly educated as a physician; but, owing to a distaste for the practice of his profession, which he could never overcome, he established himself in the drug business, in which he acquired a very large estate. He was noted in Norwich for the interest which he took in the welfare of his clerks and apprentices. He made it his business to see that the younger ones attended school a part of the winter, and that they learned their lessons properly. He watched over their morals, and inculcated virtue both by precept and example. He used to say in after years, and so did his wife, that, of all the apprentices they had ever had in their family, there was not one with whom they had taken more pains than Benedict Arnold. He was a widow's son, and he came to them at a younger age than was usual, and both these circumstances conspired to increase their tenderness for him. They cared for him, indeed, as if he had been their own son. In common with all the members of the family, he enjoyed the freedom and comfort of a spacious and elegant house, one of the best in that part of Connecticut. The gardens of the house were remarkably extensive and well kept. Orphan as he was, there was probably not a boy in Connecticut more advantageously situated than Benedict Arnold.

He was no common boy. The most striking trait of his character was fearlessness. He would place himself in situations of extreme peril, for no other motive than to terrify his elders, or to "show off" his courage. In those simple old days, apprentices used to perform many services of a household character, such as bringing in wood and water, taking care of the family horse, blacking the master's Sunday boots, and going to mill. It was often the duty of the boy Arnold to carry bags of Indian corn to a mill, two miles from home, himself riding upon the bags that were thrown over the horse's back. While he was waiting for his grist, it was his delight to astonish the miller with his wild, daring tricks. As he was bathing in the mill-stream, he would seize hold of one of the spokes of the

great water-wheel, and go around with it, now dangling in the air, now buried in the foaming water, while the miller stood horror-stricken at his recklessness. He was a most daring and headlong rider. Horses that he was accustomed to ride were observed to fall into bad habits, such as kicking, starting, and running away.

Another marked characteristic was cruelty. He was barbarous, Mrs. Sigourney reports, to every form of animal life. Dogs slunk out of his way when they saw him coming, and cats came to an untimely end where he resided. He was cruel to insects and birds. He took a devilish pleasure, as it seemed, in breaking the eggs in the nests of birds, and in observing the dismay of the mother. Mrs. Lathrop used to remonstrate with him. She told him that the bereaved birds seemed to say, "Cruel Benedict Arnold!" at which the little monster would turn away and chuckle.

Mrs. Sigourney does not confirm the tradition that he ran away from his master, enlisted in the army during the Seven Years' War, and deserted. We are left to infer that he learned his business at Norwich, and, in due time, set up for himself at New Haven, where he had a somewhat extensive drug-store, and carried on a trade with the West Indies in vessels of his The signboard that used to be over his drug-store is still preserved in New Haven.

own.

At the first tap of the drum in the war of the Revolution, he marched the company of militia of which he was captain to the rendezvous near Boston, and Connecticut saw him no more till a certain day in the autumn of 1781, when he returned in command of a body of British troops to ravage the State that gave him birth. The people of Norwich, Mrs. Sigourney tells us, were alarmed one night at seeing the southern sky illumined as by a conflagration, while the low thunder of a distant cannonade was borne to them on the southern breeze. The minutemen rushed to the mustering place; horses were saddled, and vehicles made ready; and, in a few minutes, the whole population capable of bearing arms were hastening to the scene of danger. The foremost horseman soon passed the word from front to rear that New London, the finest seaport town in the

State, fourteen miles south of Norwich, had been fired by the enemy. The men of Norwich pressed on with such rapidity, that in three hours from the first alarm many of them stood among the smoking ruins of the town. The town was destroyed; the inhabitants, in the chill of an autumn night, were houseless; and the brutal foe had fled beyond the reach of vengeance. Who had done this infernal deed? Benedict Arnold! Men who had known him in other days as an enterprising trader recognized him as he sat upon his horse, calmly surveying the progress of the flames. He had the effrontery to enter a house, where often he had been honorably entertained as a guest, and there satisfy his hunger from the plunder of the pantry; and when he had finished his repast he ordered the house to be fired. He is said to have expressed his regret that he could not go as far as Norwich, and burn the very house in which he was born.

To the destruction by the fire were added the horrors of massacre. On the other side of the river Thames was Fort Griswold, which Arnold carried by assault after a desperate resistance on the part of the garrison. The massacre was continued after the garrison had surrendered, and the ground was heaped high with dead, both British and American. Wives and mothers hurried over from New London, and were seen searching among the dead and wounded for sons and husbands. Here was a wife watching for the last breath of an expiring husband, and there a mother shrieking over the just discovered body of her dead boy. It was a time of such varied and intense horror that no words can ever describe it, and the very tradition of it in New London among the old families has something of the vividness of recent news. Many families lost all they possessed in the conflagration of the town; and in the massacre at the fort fell those who could have repaired the loss. Who can realize the bitterness of the reflection at the time, that all this was the work of a man who was a native of the soil? Who can wonder that the name of Benedict Arnold should be so deeply and universally odious?

The wages of his niquity were not as large as they are sometimes stated. He was paid a sum of money equal to about