The visit to England appears to have further developed the love of show and luxury which painfully distinguished Jacob, who must needs import specimens of English goods and English tailoring, while all that William brought back was a copy of Locke on the Human Understanding, the purchase of which absorbed all his private means, as he never willingly asked his father for a single penny. But it was becoming apparent that he had not the physical strength to continue in the Guard during war time, and after the disastrous campaign of 1757, and the defeat at Hastenbeck,[1] 26th July, 1757 (between 20 and 30 miles from Hanover), his parents resolved to remove him—a step apparently attended by no small difficulty, as our faithful chronicler narrates:— “I can now comprehend the reason why we little ones were continually sent out of the way, and why I had only by chance a passing glimpse of my brother as I was sitting at the entrance of our street-door, when he glided like a shadow along, wrapped in a great coat, followed by my mother with a parcel containing his accoutrements. After he had succeeded in passing unnoticed beyond the last sentinel at Herrenhausen he changed his dress.... My brother’s keeping himself so carefully from all notice was undoubtedly to avoid the danger of being pressed, for all unengaged young men were forced into the service. Even the clergy, unless they had livings, were not exempted.” During these times of public and private peril, the little girl was sent regularly to the garrison school with her brother Alexander till three in the afternoon, when she went to another school till six, to learn knitting. “From that time forward I was fully employed in providing my brothers with stockings, and remember that the first pair for Alexander touched the floor when I stood upright finishing the front. Besides this my pen was frequently in requisition for writing not only my mother’s letters to my father, but for many a poor soldier’s wife in our neighbourhood to her husband in the camp: for it ought to be remembered that in the beginning of the last century very few women, when they left country schools, had been taught to write.” In addition to these occupations, she was called upon to make herself useful when the fastidious Jacob honoured the humble table with his presence, “and poor I got many a whipping for being awkward at supplying the place of footman or waiter.” The sight of her mother constantly in tears; the prolonged absence of her father; the sister’s unhappiness at being homeless when about to become a mother; all these circumstances combined to sadden the personal recollections of a time of almost unsurpassed national calamity. After the loss of the battle at Hastenbeck, the Recollections thus conclude this period. [Sidenote: 1757-1760. _Early Recollections._]