"I believe I should have been swept away by the flood of French infidelity if it had not been for one thing--the remembrance of the time when my sainted mother used to make me kneel by her side, taking my little hands folded in hers, and cause me to repeat the Lord's Prayer." CORNELIA BEEKMAN. The smallest worm will turn when trodden on, And doves will peck, in safeguard of their brood. SHAKESPEARE. The vaunts And menace of the vengeful enemy Pass like the gust, that roared and died away In the distant tree. COLERIDGE. Mrs. Cornelia Beekman was a daughter of Pierre Van Cortlandt, Lieutenant Governor of New York from 1777 to 1795; and she seems to have inherited her father's zeal for the rights of his country. She was born at the Cortlandt manor house, "an old fashioned stone mansion situated on the banks of the Croton river," in 1752; was married when about seventeen or eighteen, to Gerard G. Beekman; and died on the fourteenth of March, 1847. A few anecdotes will illustrate the noble characteristics of her nature.[36] [36] For a fuller account of her life, see the second volume of Mrs. Ellet's Women of the Revolution, to which work we are indebted for the substance of these anecdotes. When the British were near her residence, which was a short distance from Peekskill, a soldier entered the house one day and went directly to the closet, saying, in reply to a question she put to him, that he wanted some brandy. She reproved him for his boldness and want of courtesy, when he threatened to stab her with a bayonet. Unalarmed by his oath-charged threats--although an old, infirm negro was the only aid at hand--she in turn threatened him, declaring that she would call her husband and have his conduct reported to his commander. Her sterness and intrepidity, coupled with her threats, subdued the insolent coward, and, obeying her orders, he marched out of the house. A party of tories, under command of Colonels Bayard and Fleming, once entered her house, and, with a great deal of impudence and in the most insulting tone, asked if she was not "the daughter of that old rebel, Pierre Van Cortlandt?" "I am the daughter of Pierre Van Cortlandt, but it becomes not such as you to call my father a rebel," was her dauntless reply. The person who put the question now raised his musket, at which menacing act, she coolly reprimanded him and ordered him out of doors. His heart melted beneath the fire of her eye, and, abashed, he sneaked away.