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1Author:  Smith Seba 1792-1868Add
 Title:  John Smith's Letters, with 'picters' to Match  
 Published:  1997 
 Subjects:  University of Virginia Library, Modern English collection | UVA-LIB-Text | University of Virginia Library, Early American Fiction, 1789-1875 | UVA-LIB-EarlyAmFict1789-1875 
 Description: Dear Father—I take my pen in hand to let you know that I'm as hearty as a bear, and hope these few lines will find you, and mother, and grandfather, and cousin Debby, and all the children, enjoying the same blessing. We stood our march remarkable well, and are all alive, and safe, and sound as a whistle. And Sargent Johnson makes a most capital officer. He's jest sich a man as is wanted down here—there's no skeering him, I can tell you. He'd fight against bears, and wild-cats, and the British, and thunder and lightnin', and any thing else, that should set out to meddle with our disputed territory. And he's taken a master-liking to me, too, and says if he has any hard fighting to do, although I'm the youngest in the company, he shall always choose me first for his right-hand man. He says I had more pluck at the drafting than any one in the whole company, and he should rather have me by his side in battle, than any three of the rest of'em. But maybe you'd like to hear something about our march down here, and so on. Dear Father—Tell mother I ain't shot yet, though we've had one pretty considerable of a brush, and expect every day to have some more. Colonel Jarvis has took quite a liking to our little Smithville detachment. He says we are the smartest troops he's got, and as long as we stick by him, it isn't Sir John Harvey, nor all New-Brumzick, nor even Queen Victory herself can ever drive him off of Fitzherbert's farm. Perhaps you mayn't remember much about this Fitzherbert's farm, where we are. It is the very place where the British nabbed our Land Agent, Mr. McIntire, when he was abed, and asleep, and couldn't help himself, and carried him off to Frederiction jail. Let 'em come and try to nab us, if they dare; if they wouldn't wish their cake was dough again, I'm mistaken. We've got up pretty considerable of a little kind of a fort here, and we keep it manned day and night—we don't more than half of us sleep to once, and are determined the British shall never ketch us with both eyes shet. Dear Father—We stick by here yet, takin' care of our disputed territory and the logs; and while we stay here the British will have to walk as straight as a hair, you may depend. We ain't had much fighting to do since my last letter; and some how or other, things seem to be getting cooler down here a little, so that I'm afraid we ain't agoing to have the real scratch, after all, that I wanted to have. A day or two arter we took the logging camp and brought the men and oxen off here prisoners of war, we was setting in the fort after dinner and talking matters over, and Sargent Johnson was a wondering what a plague was the reason the British didn't come up to the scratch as they talked on. He said he guessed they wasn't sich mighty fairce fellers for war as they pretended to be, arter all.
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