“This concludes the material part of General Jackson’s letter. It was in the feverish glories of the Hundred Days that Napoleon came into possession of Mr. Monroe’s translation. There was no doubt about the facts. There happened to be abroad then in France two or three American gentlemen who were accustomed to the use of the rifle. One of them selected a weapon out of the four sent from America to the French emperor, and in Napoleon’s presence did some really excellent sharpshooting at one hundred yards. “Had Napoleon won Waterloo, it is possible that he would have organized a corps of sharpshooters and armed them with the American rifle, which was capable of a more deadly accuracy than any European arm of the kind, not excepting even the rifle of Switzerland. General Jackson repeated the compliment of Napoleon to the typical American weapon to General William Selby Harney, then a field officer of dragoons, who in turn related the incident to the writer.” ANENT THE SHANNON FAMILY. Eleanor Lexington, in the _Buffalo Sunday News_, states that Nathaniel Shannon, who was born in Ireland 1655, came to this country when he was thirty-two years old and made his home in Boston, where in 1701 he was a member of the Old South Church. Twenty-two years later he died, and the stone marking his grave in the Old Granary Burying Ground in Boston is still standing. Nathaniel’s brother, Robert, was mayor of Derry in 1689, and Nathaniel was also a man of affairs, holding many town offices. He was the first naval officer of the port of Boston and a merchant of prominence. The papers now preserved in the Massachusetts State Archives show that he was a man of good education. His wife was Elizabeth, and their children were Nathaniel J., Robert, who is supposed to have died unmarried, and Samuel, who married Ann Miller. Nathaniel the second married Abigail Vaughan, whose father was one of the royal councillors and also chief justice of New Hampshire. Nathaniel and Abigail had two sons, Nathaniel and Cutts. The four children of Nathaniel were his namesake, and George, Margaret and Abigail. Nathaniel and his wife, Abigail Vaughan, lived in Portsmouth, N. H., where he was a ship merchant. He also lived in Ipswich. Among other records of this generation, still extant, is that of a deed conveying land to Jonathan Belcher, 1720. Nathaniel was a slave owner, and, by will, left negroes to his sons.