A heroine of 1812

A warm evening in early June of the year 1812 showed the streets of Baltimore city gay with groups of people crowding the steps of the houses, or sauntering up and down from cor...

Within the week Rhoda Kendall arrived with her father from Boston. As her Cousin Joe had described her, Lettice was not surprised to meet a quiet, reserved girl. By the side of...

The curiously indented shore of the Chesapeake Bay presents a country so full of little rivers and inlets that it is oftener easier to cut across a narrow channel by boat than t...

If Rhoda doubted James’s chivalric attitude toward her, she had reason to change her mind before the day was over. Her escort was all attention, and when it became evident that...

While the long summer days lasted, Robert Clinton remained a guest at Mr. Tom Hopkins’s. It was a pet scheme of Rhoda’s father that she should marry the young New Yorker, and he...

By the time the summer was over, many of Lettice’s friends had left the neighborhood. Rhoda had gone to Washington to join her father, who was still detained in the capital city...

By this time the ports and harbors of the Chesapeake were declared in a state of blockade, and after her visit in Washington was over, Lettice returned to Baltimore to hear that...

“Cockburn is coming!” This was the news that was borne from lip to lip, and Lettice was made to repeat her experience over and over. It must be said that she did rather needless...

The presence of the enemy in the neighborhood convinced every one of the necessity of taking every precaution to protect themselves and their property. At first alarm many perso...

So far, with the exception of the raid into the upper Chesapeake, the eastern shore of Maryland had not suffered greatly from the enemy’s depredations, but during the spring and...

“The box with the papers. I hid it by the footstone where Theophilus Hopkins is buried, and just now, when Mr. Baldwin and I went to get it, we found nothing there. Some one has...

Lettice ran desperately fast to gain her horse, but for a moment it seemed that all were lost, for the sound of oars had ceased, and instead, shouts were heard; an approaching p...

The rôle of patient which was enforced upon both Lettice and Mr. Baldwin was not altogether disagreeable to the pair. A couple of days was all the time that Mr. Baldwin would co...

The two who had lately been companions in misery met each other, at the supper table, for the first time since the evening of their perilous experience. “This is but our third m...

The next day the two girls parted, not to meet again for many a long day. Aunt Martha had received a letter from her husband, in which he begged that she would leave the plantat...

The winter passed without special incident to Lettice and the household where she was sheltered, but the spring brought a renewal of depredations along the shores of the Chesape...

“How hot it is; how hot it is!” said Lettice, on that memorable morning of August 24, 1814. “How uncomfortable one can be in this world! Here we sit nearly dead with the heat, a...

The night grew darker and darker. Not one of the three in the house thought of sleep, for from time to time the crackle and blaze of some new fire, the roar of the devouring ele...

From time to time during the day came news of a possible engagement. Frigates, bomb-ketches, and small vessels were reported to be ranging themselves in position to cannonade th...

Lettice was not long in seeking a private talk with her father, there was so much that each wanted to say without the presence of listeners; and when many of the sad things had...