I happened, I think it was in January, 1780, about the middle of the month, to be at Flushing, Long Island; of course I was too young to be a combatant, so I wandered about among my friends as circumstances directed; sometimes among the whigs and sometimes among the tories, having by the aid of friends in both armies a passport to the one or the other side.  At this particular time, I observed a funeral procession of rather an extraordinary character.  In its appearance it was partly civil and partly military.  A carriage dressed in sable plumes was followed by a number of military men with the usual badges of mourning.  They belonged to the 22nd, 38th, and 80th regiments; the latter Grenadiers.  It proceeded in silence along the street, having started from a public house kept by a man of the name of Vanderbilt.  I could not perceive any persons attending as principal mourners, although great grief was discoverable in the countenances of those present.  Upon further inquiry I found that it was the funeral of the honourable Mrs. Napier, and that the corpse was now to be carried to the vault of lieutenant governor Colden at Springfield, whence, at a convenient opportunity, it was to be removed to England.  She was only twenty three years of age when she died.  Young and beautiful, she was the idol of her family, which she had not hesitated to forsake, that she might follow the fortunes of her husband.  He commanded a company of Grenadiers in the 80th regiment, and was the son of lord Napier, a Scottish nobleman.

If I mistake not, he had seen service with the army of Canada, and after its surrender to general Gates, was enabled by an early exchange, to retire with his wife to Long Island, for the benefit of her health.  They had two daughters, one of the age of three years, and the other of two, who were the dear solace of their retirement.  If it be true that

  “All thoughts, all passions, all delights,
    Whatever stirs this mortal frame,
  All are but ministers of love,
    And feed his sacred flame.”

the reunion of these young people must have been blissful.

An expedition to the southward was soon the unwelcome cause of their separation.  They parted; and it was during his absence that this hapless woman became alarmingly ill.  From this illness she never recovered.  She was from the first sensible of her danger, and she felt a strong presentiment that she would see her husband no more:  and for those to whom her heart instinctively clung with the affection of a daughter, she could only address her secret prayers, divided as she was from them, by the wide waters of the Atlantic.