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Echoes of Yesterday

His Excellency's systeence in the City of New York I never pretended to coents I could have no doubt; yet as long as I remained there I never knew but three or four established spies with residence in town Although I had no illusions concerning Mr Gaine and his "Gazette," at intervals I violently suspected Mr Rivington of friendliness to us, and this in spite of his Tory newspaper and the fierce broadsides he fired at rebels and rebellion But Iand aentleman he never, by word or hint or inference, so much as by the quiver of an eyelash, corroborated my suspicion, and to this day I do not knohether or not Mr Rivington furnished secret infored and sneered

Itinerant spies were always in the city in spite of the deadly watch kept up by regular and partizan, and soes fortheir credentials as well as uises and under all pretexts, so the uniform of Tory partizan corps, others attired as tradesh where they contrived to find passes I never understood

It was a time of sullenness and quick suspicion; feere free from doubt, but of those few I made one--until that day when my enemy arrived--but of that in its place, for now I mean to say a word about this city that I love--that we all love, understanding how alone she stood in seven years' chains, yet dauntless, dangerous, and defiant

For upon New York fell the brunt of British wrath, and the judg twice in fire that laid one-quarter of the town in cinders Nor was that enough, for His lightning s at herSlip, and the very sky see in the thunder that shook the shoreward houses into ruins

I think that, take it all in all, New York , save actual assault and sack Greater hardships fell to the lot of no other city in America, for we lost more than a half of our population, reat fires Want, with the rich, meant famine for the poor and sad privation for the well-to-do; smallpox and typhus swept us; commerce by water died, and slowly our loneliness beca out his blue dragoons to the very edges of the river there at Harlee