MINOR TOPICS

WOMEN IN WARFARE

Russia has a battalion of women in its army, officered by women, who have proved their bravery, their discipline and their power of endurance. Women are not accepted in the other armies of Europe, but in each of them some women have sought to enlist as men. It is of record that one American woman went with her husband lately to France as a private. Her sex was discovered after her arrival, and she was sent home.

A New York magazine, The Porcupine, finds from the muster rolls of the Civil War that these women enlisted in the armies and went to the front:

Forty-Sixth Pennsylvania, Company D-"Charles D. Fuller"; detected as being a woman: discharged.

One Hundred and Twenty-Sixth Pennsylvania, Company F-Sergeant "Frank Mayne"; killed in battle and discovered to be a woman.

Second Michigan, Company F—“Franklin Thompson" fought well in several battles, but proved to be a woman; real name Miss Seelye.

Twenty-Sixth North Carolina Confederate, Company F-Mrs. L. M. Blaylock; enlisted March 20, 1861; discharged for being a woman.

The United States has as many men under arms today as it had in the Civil War. It is not unlikely that among its soldiers still undetected

are some women.

Mrs. Mary A. Livermore in her remarkable book "My Story of the War" cites several instances of women-soldiers: "I remember Annie Etheridge, of Michigan. who was with the Third Michigan in its every battle. When, their three-years' term ended, the re-enlisted veterans joined the Fifth Michigan, she went with them. Through the whole four years of the War she was found in the field, often in the thickest of the fight. Bridget Devens, known as "Michigan Bridget" went to the field with the First Michigan Cavalry, in which her husband was a private, and served through the war.

Mrs. Kady Brownell was born in a camp, her father being a British soldier. Her husband was a "non-com" in the Fifth Rhode Island, and she went with him and served in the Burnside Expedition at Roan

oke Island and New Berne. General Sigel wrote of her "Mrs. Brownell served with R. I. militia, is a pensioner on the rolls by special act of Congress and deserves great credit for her courage and patriotism."

(Mrs. Brownell died only in 1916. She was then employed at the "Jumel Mansion", Washington Headquarters, 160th Street, New York.)

The Platteville, Wis., Witness, March 1864, records, as if it were nothing unusual, "the return from the Army, of Miss Georgianna Petermann, for two years a drummer in the Seventh Wisconsin."

Some one has stated the number of women-soldiers known to the service as little less than four hundred. I cannot vouch for this, but am convinced the number was larger than was dreamed of. Entrenched in secrecy, and regarded as men, they were sometimes revealed as women, by accident or casualty. Some startling histories of these military women were current in the gossips of Army life, and extravagant and unreal as were many one always feel that they had a foundation in fact."

A WITCH-DOG, 1692

At the time of the witchcraft delusion in 1692, an Andover dog was hanged as a witch. This was a poor old yellow dog belonging to the family of Samuel Wardwell, one of the victims of the persecution. The house was deserted, the children sent to the neighbors, the mother in jail, herself accused. The dog howled with fear and grief. The neighbors accused him of being "possessed", and had a real hanging for him. He is said to have marched along as if he knew the cause for which he gave his life. This story was handed down to the sixth in line, Simon Wardwell of Andover, who told it to my uncle one night in his reminis

cences.

The next morning, on the commuters' train, the tale was passed on to a young printer, who in turn told it to Miss Nutting, a contributor to the Old and New holiday number published that year (1871). by Roberts Brothers. It took a prize-sent in as a poem entitled, "The Martyrdom of Griff" (the dog's true name). My attention was called to it as a good thing to introduce into a series of historical papers we were running in the Andover Townsman, and the printer-man lent me

the copy he had of the Christmas issue. The poem was printed in the Andover Townsman March 12, 1897. The place where the house stood, and the place of execution is near where I write today, and you can be sure it is a true tale. Files of the historical articles of all our suburban papers are carefully collected in scrap books by the State Library, the New England Historical Library and the Essex Institute. The last-named has a full file of the Townsman, Andover has two, one at the office, one at the library, but no extra copies exist now of the article. I find at the foot of my copy of this poem, "See Upham Witchcraft." "John Bradstreet accused of bewitching a dog, who was executed, while John ran away."

BOSTON Transcript.

C. H. A.

A HUGUENOT RELIC

A brief article appeared in The Sun three years ago telling of the unearthing of the foundation stones of a church built by the Huguenots at New Rochelle, N. Y., in 1710.

A mile north of the village of Welaka, my Florida home, and across the river (Welaka is on the east bank of the St. Johns at the mouth of the famous Ocklawaha River), and some sixty miles south of St. Augustine, there are to be seen to-day the remains of two sunken rice fields, laid out by the Huguenots, according to local tradition, in 1565.

After the Huguenots were driven from St. Augustine by the Spaniards they went up the St. Johns, which flows north, and settled on its banks near this place.

I am personally acquainted with these old fields, having had the pleasure of hunting deer in and around them many times, and in my boyhood days they were a resort for wild pigeons.

The irrigation ditches are still plainly visible, the laterals at some points being three feet deep, and the old causeway leading to the river banks is still plainly seen.

The two raceways, one on each side of the causeway, that carried water to and from the river, are still sufficiently open for a distance of about three hundred yards to permit of small boats carrying four or five people being paddled and pushed up them.

That some mechanical means was used to drain or overflow the fields is evident, and some of the old iron parts of this machinery, suggestive of a hydraulic ram, taken from the fields, can be seen in the doorway of Jacob Clarke, of Welaka and Arlington, N. J.

The two fields were probably thirty acres in extent and are now a perfect jungle, covered with the wildest kind of growth, massive oaks spreading two hundred feet, cypress four feet through, and undergrowth so rank and large that the sun never shines on the earth beneath.

Running through the larger field is a dry oak ridge-both fields are in a swamp that overflows with high water in the river-and on this ridge at certain times of the day, after feeding in the surrounding swamp the deer come to rest, and it is at this time that the hunter goes on his trip to the rice fields.

ALFRED, ME.

D. C. MAIN, M. D.

QUINCY IN ENGLAND

The Josiah Quincy, Jr., of 1744-1775, writing in the journal of his London tour-when he comes to Exeter and views the city, cathedral and bishop's palace, the entry runs: "The cathedral surprisingly grand and antique. Amazing work of superstition." The Puritan dispensation in New England had not then been quite worked out in the best blood of New England. A little later he saw the parade at church of the bishop, archdeacons, deans, chanters, etc., and gold service of the communion and the chanting of the prayers, and the entry in the journal is "Shocked-indignant at the mockery of the great and the priests. The north walk in this city was beyond expression beautiful." Young Quincy-he was only just out of his twenties, though already with an international reputation, as we should say now, and of course with the fine education and good breeding of the most favored classes, was not insensible to the beauties of nature and art, as appears often enough in this journal, but cathedrals and abbeys seem chiefly to have impressed him for their physical size and social anachronism. For instance, again: "Went to hear divine service at Westminster Abbey. Cursorily viewed the astonishing work, which I intend shortly to give more attention to. The service-mockery and priestcraft." It must be remembered that John Adams, of the generation preceding his only,

was the sturdy American patriot who said that he would not give a sixpence for a statue of Praxiteles or a painting by Raphael. Indeed on this very trip Colonel Barré, who showed some friendliness toward America in her trial, warned Quincy against what was called, in the social nomenclature of that epoch, "Taste." Quincy thus quotes him: "Tis taste that ruins whole kingdoms; 'tis taste that depopulates whole nations. I could not help weeping when I surveyed the ruins of Rome. All the remains of the Roman grandeur are of works which were finished when Rome and the spirit of Rome was no more. Mr. Q. let your countrymen beware of taste in their buildings, equipage and dress, as a deadly poison!"

Young Quincy had gone to London on a confidential public mission in those anxious days when America was hesitating on the brink of revolution, and even such men as Benjamin Franklin were working to prevent the plunge. As he had been junior counsel with John Adams in the defense of the British officers and soldiers charged with the State Street "Massacre" four years before, he was "persona grata" in England, though a fervently patriotic and inspiring leader among leaders on this side. He went to London at their request, to impress and to report his impression, and this journal, just published, is perhaps the skeleton of his intended report. This encounter with Colonel Barre well illustrates his position. Barre (who had served in Wolfe's famous expedition against Quebec) spoke admiringly of the climate, soil and inhabitants of America, but only to add that he believed that two-thirds of the British "thought the Americans were all negroes.” Young Quincy replied, according to his journal, that he "did not in the least doubt it; for if I was to judge by the late acts of Parliament, I should suppose that a majority of the people of Great Britain still thought so, for I found that their representatives still treated them as such." Quincy only adds that Barre smiled. It must have been a sickly smile, for (as Quincy knew) Colonel Barre was among those who voted for the Boston Port Bill-the drastic measure of retaliation for the Tea Party.

Breakfasts and dinners, balls and theatre parties, debates in the House of Lords and the House of Commons and interviews with great personages of the Government-who received him apparently with the indulgence that is sometimes shown to a "bad boy" of brilliant record