Lafayette's brain worked in two distinct ways. His tropic imagination stopped at nothing, and completely ran away with his common sense when [Pg 126]once it got going, as, for instance, while he lay recovering from his wound at Bethlehem. Very different from this was the clever, quick wit with which he could take advantage of momentary chances in battle, as he had demonstrated when he and his little force dropped between the jaws of the trap closing upon them at Barren Hill. Fortunately in moments of danger it was usually his wit, not his imagination, that acted, and he took excellent care of the men under him; but when he had nothing in the way of hard facts to pin his mind to earth, and gave free rein to his desires, he was not practical. In this season of wild planning he not only invented the scheme for a bucaneering expedition in company with John Paul Jones; he mapped out an uprising in Ireland, but decided that the time was not yet ripe for that. While his plan for a descent upon the English coast came to nothing, it may be said to have led to much, for it interested the Ministry, and was abandoned only in favor of a more ambitious scheme of attacking England with the help of Spain. That, too, passed after it was found that England was on the alert; but it had given Lafayette his opportunity to talk about America in and out of season, and to urge the necessity for helping the United States win independence as a means of crippling England, if not for her own sake. As the most popular social lion of the moment his words carried far, and as the most earnest advocate of America in France he was indeed what he called himself, the link that bound the two countries together. The outcome was that after [Pg 127]the collapse of the project for an expedition against England nobody could see a better way of troubling his Britannic Majesty than by following Lafayette's advice; whereupon he redoubled his efforts and arguments. Indeed, he exceeded the wishes of the Americans themselves. He wanted to send ships and soldiers as well as money and supplies, but with the fiasco of the attack upon Newport fresh in their minds Congress and our country were chary of asking for more help of that kind. He assured M. de Vergennes that it was characteristic of Americans to believe that in three months they would no longer need help of any kind. He wrote to Washington that he was insisting upon money with such stress that the Director of Finances looked upon him as a fiend; but he argued also in France that the Americans would be glad enough to see a French army by the time it got there.