Although the British officers made New York a theatre of amusement in which the candles never flickered or died out for a space of many months, the dashing André could not have found it as agreeable a spot as Philadelphia. In that city he planned the famous Meschianza in honor of jovial Sir William Howe, and was acclaimed the hero of the hour. Fame to him seems to have been an instinctive passion, and although of a family humbler than most of those of his scarlet-coated compatriots, he rose like a meteor above the shackles of environment and became the favorite of his regiment. It is small wonder that a youth who could correspond with the learned Anna Seward, as he did at the age of eighteen, should have hated his work in the mercantile shop of old Warnford Court. Looking back over the years to-day, he appears to us a paragon. That the "Cher Jean" of that humble home circle at Litchfield should be described by all his faithful biographers in most glowing colors is singular proof that he could not have fallen far short of their eulogiums. Of unusual personal beauty, a poet, artist, linguist, and musician, he lives for us again the handsome limner the belle of Long Island waved to on an early summer's day. The love-affairs of Major André have always created as much discussion as the justice of his lamented fate. Whether he was true to that paragon of virtues, Honora Sneyd, as has often been written, or forgot her for Peggy Chew, Rebecca Redman, or any of the host of colonial beauties whose names have been linked with his, can never be answered. This we know, that after she was married to another, "the endless Mr. Edgeworth," André still wore her miniature, and he himself tells us that he secreted it in his mouth when taken a prisoner at Quebec. His affection for her was pure and lofty, and in his sprightly and characteristic letters to Anna Seward, her foster-sister, who corresponded with him under the pseudonym of "Julia," we obtain glimpses of a hopeless passion; of a lover who truly loved and longed, but was never an accepted suitor. In the fall-time of 1769 he writes to "Julia" from the midst of the implements of "quill-driving" in the London establishment: [Illustration: MAJOR JOHN ANDRÉ.]