During the great and the terrible French revolution (1792), a
young nobleman escaped from the scene of horror, having with
difficulty saved his head, and without the possibility of saving
any thing else. He arrived at New York nearly destitute; and
after passing his life, not only in splendour, but in the
splendour of the court of France, he found himself jostled by the
busy population of the New World, without a dollar between him
and starvation. In such a situation one might almost sigh for
the guillotine. The young noble strove to labour; but who would
purchase the trembling efforts of his white hands, while the
sturdy strength of many a black Hercules was in the market? He
abandoned the vain attempt to sustain himself by the aid of his
fellow-men, and determined to seek a refuge in the forest. A few
shillings only remained to him; he purchased an axe, and reached
the Oneida territory. He felled a few of the slenderest trees,
and made himself a shelter that Robinson Crusoe would have
laughed at, for it did not keep out the rain. Want of food,
exposure to the weather, and unwonted toil, produced the natural
result; the unfortunate young man fell sick, and stretched upon
the reeking earth, stifled, rather than sheltered, by the
withering boughs which hung over him; he lay parched with thirst,
and shivering in ague, with the one last earthly hope, that each
heavy moment would prove the last.
Near to the spot which he had chosen for his miserable rest, but
totally concealed from it by the thick forest, was the last
straggling wigwam of an Indian village.
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