Chapter Seventeen—Great News
As neither Marcel nor I was assigned to any duty for the remainder of the day, we thought to while away a portion of the time by strolling about Philadelphia.
"We need not make spies of ourselves," said Marcel; "but I know no military law against the gratification of our own personal curiosity."
Guided by such worthy motives, we spent some time that was to our amusement and perhaps to our profit also. Barring the presence of the soldiery, Philadelphia showed few evidences that war was encamped upon its threshold. I have seldom witnessed a scene of such bustle and animation, and even of gayety too, as the good Quaker City presented. A stranger would have thought there was no war, and that this was merely a great garrison town.
The presence of fifteen or twenty thousand soldiers was good for trade, and gold clinked with much freedom and merriment. Though wagon-trains of provisions were taken sometimes by the Americans, yet many others came safely into Philadelphia, and the profits were so large that the worthy Pennsylvania farmers could not resist the temptation to take the risks, though most of them would have preferred to sell to the patriots, had the latter possessed something better than Continental paper to offer them.
"The British boast much of their bayonets," said Marcel; "but they fight better with their gold."
"And we have neither," said I.
"Which merely means," said Marcel, "not that we shall not win, but that we will be longer in the winning."
Our conversation was diverted from this topic by my observance of a peculiar circumstance. Often I would see four or five men, gathered at a street corner or in front of a doorway, talking with an appearance of great earnestness. Whenever Marcel and I, who were in full uniform, and thus were known to be British officers as far as we could be seen, approached, they would lower their tone or cease to talk. This had not happened on any day before, and was not what we would have expected from citizens who had grown used to the presence of the British army. I asked Marcel to take note of it.