On the whole, however, this disposition on the part of the men of the Black Watch could hardly be called surprising, in view of the ignorance regarding the Highland character then prevalent in England. Three years before, King George the Second, having never seen a Scotch Highlander--although the Black Watch had already been organized in the Highlands as the Forty-third regiment of the British army--asked to have some examples of the race sent to appear before him and his court. Two Highlanders, Gregor MacGregor and John Campbell, appeared in response to the King's command. (A third, John Grant, began the journey to London with them but died on the way.) MacGregor and Campbell gave exhibitions of their dexterity with the broadsword and the Lochaber axe, in the presence of the King and his Court. When they had finished the King gave each a gold guinea as a gratuity. They gave the coins as a tip to the porter, on their departure. The King had not understood that his guests were Highland gentlemen. Sitting at the window of the house where I now pass the peaceful and uneventful days of the soldier who has fought until wounds incapacitate him for further service afield, I smiled, one day, at another thought in which the past and the present incongruously came into association. From this window, I viewed the populous, close-built residential stretches of Washington Heights, typical of the city life of to-day. And, amid all this, my eye could seek out the very spot where occurred the grimly humorous adventure of Major Murray, most corpulent of the officers of the Black Watch, when the command was fighting against Washington's rebellious patriots. Having to scale the heights which were later to become famous as the habitat of the hardy goats of Harlem, Major Murray was at a great disadvantage because of his weight and girth. "Soldiers, would you leave me behind?" he appealed, pathetically, when he needed assistance. And then his husky Highlanders would boost him upward toward the fray. It was, consequently, in a somewhat breathless and confused condition that the valiant major attained the spot upon the heights where the conflict raged. Rushing forward to close with some antagonist in the Colonials, Major Murray discovered that his only weapon, his dirk, had got twisted behind him in the strenuous struggles of the ascent and that, because of his excessive fatness, he couldn't reach it. The records of the regiment, at the home station, Perth, state that the major, on this occasion, tore a sword from the grasp of one of three Colonials who attacked him and put all three to flight. With no thought to cast aspersion upon the major's valour, I have always been inclined to the belief that the writer of the regimental reports may have compensated in a certain generosity of statement for his earlier description of the major's comic predicament.