assailant but told him that she would call her husband and send information of his conduct to his officer. Her resolution
triumphed over his audacity, for seeing that she showed no fear he was not long in obeying her command to leave the house. Upon another occasion she was writing a letter to her father, when looking out she saw the enemy approaching. There was only time to secrete the paper behind the framework of the mantelpiece, where it was discovered when the house was repaired after the war.
The gist of Mrs. Beekman's contemptuous replies to the enemy under Bayard and Fanning is related by herself in a letter written in 1777. A party of Royalists commanded by those two Colonels paid a visit to her house, conducting themselves with the arrogance and insolence she was accustomed to suffer. One of them imprudently said to her, "Are you the daughter of that old Rebel, Pierre Van Cortlandt?" She replied, "I am the daughter of Pierre Van Cortlandt, but it does not become such as you to call my father a Rebel." The Tory raised his musket, but with perfect calmness she reproved him for his insolence and bade him begone. He finally turned away abashed.
The illustrations in every page of the world's history of vast results depending upon trivial things finds support in a simple incident in the life of Cornelia Beekman. It would really seem that in the Providence that disposes all human events the fate of a Nation may be found suspended upon this woman's judgment. This is the incident: John Webb, familiarly known as "Lieutenant Jack," who actively served as aid on the staff of the commander-in-chief, was much at her house during operations of the American army on the banks of the Hudson. On one occasion passing through Peekskill he rode up and requested her to take charge of a valise which contained his new suit of uniform and a quantity of gold. "I will send for
