One day a man-of-war went to search one of our ships for men, they said, who had run from them. They were in sight of one of our forts; but when our men would not let the search be made, a fire was made on our ship, and they took four of the men, and hung one of them. This was bad for our trade, and made a great stir in our midst, and woke up the old wrath at Eng-land. So Con-gress, with a wish to give Eng-land tit for tat, as you would say, made a law that we should not trade with her, and our ships should not go out of our own ports. But this, you know, hurt us more than it hurt Eng-land; and, for a time, Jef-fer-son came in for a share of the hard thoughts, as though it were all his fault. Those whose trade had been hurt by the law felt as if he had been to blame, and the cause of loss to them. There were, too, on the sea a band of sea thieves, as we might call them. They were men who came from a wild race, far off, who would seize ships when they could, and take all the crew and hold them for slaves, till their friends would pay a good price for them. It was no strange thing in those days to hear read out in church the names of those who were slaves to such men. Great sums of gold were sent to set our men free. At last we made some terms with these thieves of the sea, but they would not keep the peace. Then John Ad-ams sent out four ships to fight these men. We did not own but six war ships in those days. One of these had the bad luck to run on the shore in that strange land, so the foe took it, and the crew were made slaves. There was a brave young man in one of our ships, who made a plan to get back the lost boat, which had the same name as the town of "Phil-a-del-phia." He thought if we could not get her from the foe it would be best to burn her, so that they could not use her for their own ends. So he took a small boat which had been won from the foe in a fight, and put some of our own men in her, and stole up to the side of the "Phil-a-del-phia" by night. If he was seen--it was thought to be a boat load of friends--but they soon went to work, and when they got on board, the fight was short and fierce. The "Phil-a-del-phia" was theirs in no time; but they found they could not move her, so they set her on fire, and set sail once more, and did not lose a man. All this won a name and fame for the young man, whose name was De-ca-tur, and in time there grew up such a fear of him in those wild States that they were glad to make peace and take no more slaves. [Illustration: DE-CA-TUR BURN-ING THE "PHIL-A-DEL-PHIA."]