Brief was the time after the preceding sealing scene of the young
Kosciusko for his military vocation took place, before himself and
his friend Niemcivitz--who had also received his "anointing spell,"
which he gayly declared came by more bright eyes than he would dare
whisper to their possessors--made a joint arrangement to quit the
study of arms, though thus cheered on by the Muses and the Graces,
and at once enter the exercise in some actual field of rugged war.
The newly-opened dispute between Great Britain and her colonies in
North America seemed calculated for their honorable practice.
Consulting some of their most respected friends, they speedily found
means to cross the seas, and shared the first great campaign under
Washington. The issue of that campaign, and those which followed it,
need not be repeated here; suffice it to say, the hard-fought contest
ended in a treaty of peace between the parent country and its
contumacious offspring, in the year 1783, with England's
acknowledgment of their independence, under the name of the United
States of America.
The two gallant Poles returned to Europe, and onward to their own
country, by a route tracked by former brave deeds; through France,
Germany, and other lands, marked by the Gustavuses, the Montecuculi,
the Turennes, the Condes, the Marlboroughs, the Eugenes, champions
alike of national peace and national glory on those widely-extended
plains and bulwarked frontiers, till the belligerent clouds of a
still more threatening hostility than any of those repelled invasions
were seen hovering luridly over their own beloved country.
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