As perhaps you may remember, when General Lincoln was forced to surrender to Cornwallis, at Charleston {135} in 1780, the haughty British general turned him over to an inferior officer, as if to treat his surrender with contempt. Lafayette said, in after years, that the captive redcoats, while they gazed at the French soldiers with their showy trappings, "did not as much as look at my darling light infantry, the apple of my eye and the pride of my heart." Whereupon the lively young French general ordered his fife and drum corps to strike up "Yankee Doodle." "Then," he said, "they did look at us, but were not very well pleased." After the surrender, both the Americans and the British hastened away. Scores of brave men, whom thus far the bullets had spared, were the victims of camp fever and smallpox. Fourteen days afterwards, Yorktown became again a sleepy little hamlet of sixty houses. On the same day that Cornwallis found "the world turned upside down," Clinton sailed from New York, with thirty-five ships and over seven thousand of his best troops. Had this great force reached the scene ten days earlier, the story of Yorktown might have been different. {136} "Cornwallis is taken!" How quickly the news spread! Men, women, and children pour in from the country, and wait along the road leading to Philadelphia, for the long-expected news. At length a horseman is seen riding at headlong speed. He waves his hat and shouts to the eager people, "Cornwallis is taken!" It is Colonel Tilghman, whom Washington sent posthaste to Philadelphia to inform Congress of the surrender. It is after midnight when he arrives. The drowsy night watchman is slowly pacing the streets. Suddenly is heard the joyful cry, "Past three o'clock, and Cornwallis is taken!" [Illustration: The Night Watchman announcing the Capture of Cornwallis] Up go the windows. Men and women rush into the streets, all eager to hear the news. An hour before daylight, old Independence bell rings out its loudest peals, and sunrise is greeted with the boom of cannon. Congress meets during the forenoon, to read Washington's dispatches. In the afternoon, the members go in solemn procession to the Lutheran church, "and return thanks to Almighty God for crowning the allied armies of the United States and France with success." At noon on Sunday, November 25, the news reached London. Somebody asked a member of the cabinet how Lord North, the prime minister, received the "communication." "As he would have taken a cannon ball in his chest," was the reply; "for he opened his arms, exclaimed {137} wildly, as he walked up and down the room during a few minutes, 'O God! it is all over! it is all over!'"