300 HISTORY OF BROOKLYN.

baked bread (fuel being among the scarcest articles at Flatbush) and a little stale butter, constituted our breakfast. At our first coming, a small piece of pickled beef was occasionally boiled for dinner; but to the beef, which was soon consumed, there succeeded clippers, or clams; and our unvaried supper was supon, or mush, sometimes with skimmed milk, but more generally with buttermilk, blended with molasses, which was kept for weeks in a churn, as swill is saved for hogs. I found it, however, after a little use, very eatable, and supper soon became my best meal. * * * * Their religious, like their other habits, were unostentatious and plain; and a simple, silent grace before meat, prevailed at the table of Jacob Suydam. When we were all seated, he suddenly clapped his hands together, threw his head on one side, closed his eyes, and remained mute and motionless for about a minute. His niece and nephew followed his example; but with such an eager solicitude that the copied attitude should be prompt and simultaneous, as to give an air of absurdity to what might otherwise have been very decent. Although little of the vernacular accent remained on the tongues of these people, they had some peculiarities in their phraseology. Instead of asking you to sit down to table, they invited you to sit by.”

After the evacuation of Brooklyn, the British, Hessians, Tories, and refugees had unlimited range over Long Island, and were quickly joined by neutrals and “fence gentry.” Most of the Whigs were absent with the army; their wives, children, and aged people alone remained at home, and their dwellings became the prey of these wretches, who robbed friend and foe alike. The negroes, also, became their willing aiders and abettors, and frequently guided them in their predatory expeditions. The loyalists were all summoned to attend at headquarters, in Bedford, to be registered; after which, they were ordered to wear a red badge in their hats, as a protection and a token of loyalty. They obeyed with ludicrous alacrity, and straightway the loyal badge flamed from every hat and cap in the county. Many ladies wore scarlet ribbons, while all the negroes, of course, were royalists and bedecked their hats with scarlet rags; and females even dispensed with their flannel petticoats, in order to supply the unprecedented demand for cloth of the requisite hue. The haughty British officers, however, scarcely