Momentous little things--so seeming trifling, inconsequential, negligible--and yet potential of cataclysmic calamity! An insect bores into the heart of an oak, and the forest monarch falls: a tiny trickling rill freezes in the rock and the mountain is rent asunder; a pine twig breaks under its weight of snow and the awful avalanche comes crashing down. In the moral world, too, the results seem altogether out of proportion to the cause: a glance of suspicion and the bloom of perfect trust is gone from the heart forever; an unkind word and love withers, a deed--it dies; one lie, one little wormy lie, and the fair integrity of character has in it the boring insect with which it may, indeed, flourish full foliage for a season, but by which, in the end, it must, being hollow hearted, succumb to the storm and fall and die. Perhaps when Burgoyne sent for the Indians and made them part of his fighting force, he then admitted into his moral makeup, as well as his military, the mighty _little thing_ which should silently yet forcefully work disaster. For many men who were irresolute as to which side to join, being indeed loyal at heart to the mother country and hesitating to strike against her, boldly threw in their fortunes with the Colonists when they heard that the Red Man formed part of the force of the advancing army. They knew what savage warfare meant even better than Burgoyne knew. Many are inclined to excuse Burgoyne on the plea that he knew nothing of the horrible atrocities of the Indians when intoxicated with the blood of battle: but fate did not excuse him. His Indians never knew the intoxication of victorious battle--thanks to the stern resolution of men who fought in defence of mothers, sisters, wives, and children shuddering in nearby homes: and as defeat came and ignominious retreat from post to post before the enraged advance of a conquering foe, the Indians deserted the army and slunk away through the western wilds back to their native tribes. BENEDICT ARNOLD. Strange that history remembers only Arnold the Traitor and not Arnold the hero of Ticonderoga, Quebec, and Saratoga. Too bad he didn’t die in that brilliant charge upon Burgoyne’s intrenchments, where after overcoming all obstacles and apparently just on the point of victory he was wounded in the same leg that had been painfully injured in the assault on Quebec--and carried fainting and profusely bleeding from the field. To be twice wounded for a cause and then to betray it--perverse human heart, who shall know its depths of perversity!