Then it was that, after halting a short time in England, he with his
school and camp companion in so many changes, prepared a second
crossing over the Atlantic, to revisit its victor President in his
olive-grounds at Mount Vernon. But Niemcivitz had another errand. His
roving Cupid had long settled its wing, and he eagerly sought to
plight, before Heaven's altar in the church, the already sacred vow
he had pledged to a fair daughter of that country while sharing the
dangers of its battlefields.
It was with great difficulty the portcullis of a friendship strong as
death had been raised in old chivalric Kent, to allow departure to so
dear and honored a guest as he, who their master had seen fall in his
memorable wounds on the plain of Brzesc. But he promised to return
again, should the same sweet cherub that sat up aloft on his first
voyage to America steer back his little bark in safety; and then he
trusted to be once more clasped to the bosom of Poland, in that of
his most beloved friend, a dweller in England. [Footnote: The
portcullis, the gate, and the armorial crest of Beaufort has
descended from the royal founder of the family, John of Gaunt, Duke
of Lancaster.]
Besides this cherished heir of his earliest remembrances, there were
other friends of olden days who had welcomed him with gladdening
recollections. Amongst these was the family of Vanderhorst,
originally of the Spanish Netherlands, who, from religious rather
than political motives, had transferred themselves from certain
persecutions in that land during times of papal tyranny to the
shelter of the British colonies on the Transatlantic shore, and who,
on the separation of those colonies into independent states from the
mother country, had removed, in relative grateful duties, to the
governing land of their early refuge, and were now dwelling here in
prosperity and happy repose, when General Kosciusko set his honored
foot on its sea-girt and virtue-bulwarked coast He was their former
guest while at New York, and he readily accepted their eager
invitation that he would revisit them in their new paternal country.
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