Robert Neilson Stephens

The Road to Paris Robert Neilson Stephens

"With our company of riflemen that marched in Arnold's army through the Maine wilderness to attack Quebec, there was a sergeant's wife, a large and sturdy woman, no common camp-follower, but decent and respected, who one day, when the troops started to wade through a freezing pond, of which they broke the thin ice coating with the butts of their guns, calmly lifted her skirts above her waist and strode in, and so kept the greater part of her clothes dry in crossing. Not a man of us made a jest, or even grinned, so natural was her action in the circumstances.