That night, Major Hight and Capt. Hugh Roger Littlepage, both got a little
how-come-you-so, drinking bumpers to the success of what they called "the
Yankee expedition," even at the moment they were indulging in constant side
hits at the failings and habits of the people. These marks of neighbourly
infirmity are not peculiar to the people of the adjacent provinces of New
York and of New England. I have often remarked that the English think and
talk very much of the French, as the Yankees speak of us; while the French,
so far as I have been able to understand their somewhat unintelligible
language--which seems never to have a beginning nor an end--treat the
English as the Puritans of the Old World. As I have already intimated, we
were not very remarkable for religion in New York, in my younger days;
while it would be just the word, were I to say that religion was
_conspicuous_ among our eastern neighbours. I remember to have heard
my grandfather say, he was once acquainted with a Col. Heathcote, an
Englishman, like himself, by birth, and a brother of a certain Sir Gilbert
Heathcote, who was formerly a leading man in the Bank of England. This Col.
Heathcote came among us young, and married here, leaving his posterity
behind him, and was lord of the manor of Scarsdale and Mamaroneck, in our
county of West Chester. Well, this Col. Heathcote told my grandfather,
speaking on the subject of religion, that he had been much shocked, on
arriving in this country, at discovering the neglected condition of
religion in the colony; more especially on Long Island, where the people
lived in a sort of heathenish condition. Being a man of mark, and connected
with the government, The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in
Foreign Parts, applied to him to aid it in spreading the truths of the
bible in the colony. The Colonel was glad enough to comply; and I remember
my grandfather said, his friend told him of the answer he returned to these
good persons in England. "I was so struck with the heathenish condition of
the people, on my arriving here," he wrote to them, "that, commanding the
militia of the colony, I ordered the captains of the different companies to
call their men together, each Sunday at sunrise, and to drill them until
sunset; unless they would consent to repair to some convenient place, and
listen to morning and evening prayer, and to two wholesome sermons read by
some suitable person, in which case the men were to be excused from drill."
[2] I do not think this would be found necessary in New England at least,
where many of the people would be likely to prefer drilling to preaching.