“The army of the latter (Shirley and Johnston), during the summer, lay on the eastern bank of the Hudson, a little south of the city of Albany. In the early part of June the troops of the Eastern provinces began to pour in, company after company; and such a motley assemblage of men never before thronged together on such an occasion, unless an example may be found in the ragged regiment of Sir John Falstaff. It would have relaxed the gravity of an anchorite to have seen the descendants of the Puritans, marching through the streets of that ancient city (Albany), take their situations on the left of the British army,—some with long coats, and others with no coats at all, with colors as various as the rainbow,—some with their hair cropped like the army of Cromwell, and others with wigs, the locks of which floated with grace around their shoulders. Their march, their accoutrements, and the whole arrangement of the troops, furnished matter of amusement to the rest of the British army. The music played the airs of two centuries ago; and the _tout ensemble_, upon the whole, exhibited a sight to the wondering strangers, to which they had been unaccustomed. Among the club of wits that belonged to the British army there was a Doctor Shackburg, attached to the staff, who combined with the science of surgeon the skill and talents of a musician. To please the new-comers, he composed a tune, and with much gravity recommended it to the officers as one of the most celebrated airs of martial music. The joke took, to the no small amusement of the British. Brother Jonathan exclaimed it was _nation fine_, and in a few days nothing was heard in the provincial camp but the air of Yankee Doodle. Little did the author in his composition then suppose that an air made for the purpose of levity and ridicule should ever be marked for such high destinies. In twenty years from that time the national march inspired the heroes of Bunker Hill, and in less than thirty years Lord Cornwallis and his army marched into the American lines to the tune of Yankee Doodle.” “Watson, in his “Occurrences of the War of Independence,” says,— “This tune, so celebrated as a national air of the Revolution, has an origin almost unknown to the mass of the people of the present day. An aged and respectable lady, born in New England, told me she remembered it well, long before the Revolution, under another name. It was then universally called ‘Lydia Fisher,’ and was a favorite New England jig. It was then the practice with it, as with Yankee Doodle now, to sing it with various impromptu verses,—such as ‘Lydia Locket lost her pocket, Lydia Fisher found it; Not a bit of money in it, Only binding round it.’