country, have been enabled to eke out the fag end of their lives a little too high for the grovelling hand of envy or the long arm of poverty to reach.
Many murmur now at the apparent good fortune of the poor soldiers. Many I have myself seen, vile enough to say, that they never deserved such favour from the country. The only wish I would bestow upon such hard-hearted wretches, is, that they might be compelled to go through just such sufferings and privations as that army did; and then if they did not sing a different tune, I should miss my guess.
But I really hope these people will not go beside themselves. Those men whom they wish to die on a dung-hill; men, who, if they had not ventured their lives in battle, and faced poverty, disease and death for their country, to gain and maintain that Independence and liberty, in the sunny beams of which, they like reptiles are basking, they would, many or the most of them, be this moment, in as much need of help and succour, as ever the most indigent soldier was before he experienced his country's beneficence.
The soldiers consider it cruel to be thus vilified, and it is cruel as the grave, to any man, when he knows his own rectitude of conduct; to have his hard services, not only debased and underrated, but scandalized and vilified. But the Revolutionary soldiers are not the only people that endure obloquy, others as meritorious, and perhaps more deserving than they, are forced to submit to ungenerous treatment.
But if the old Revolutionary Pensioners are really an eyesore, a grief of mind, to any man, or set of men, (and I know they are,) let me tell them that if they will exercise a very little patience, a few years longer will put all of them beyond the power of troubling them; for they will soon be "where the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest."
And now I think it is time to draw to a close, (and so say I, says the reader,) in truth, when I began this narrative, I thought a very few pages would contain it, but as occurrences returned to my memory, and one thing brought another to mind, I could not stop, for as soon as I had let one thought through my mind, another would step up and ask for admittance. And now, dear reader,
