establish did not come to his aid in his hour of need. So he wrote a letter to Washington, attacking him and expressing

his sorrow at the stand Washington had taken toward him, and calling him evasive, treacherous, and hypocritical!

When he came out of prison, he changed his opinion of America once more. But the American public had turned against him, as a result of his violent attack on the leader Washington. He lived in New Rochelle, where he was denied the right to vote. And he died alone and forgotten, with debts piled upon him!

•

Paine, and Napoleon, and Joan of Arc, and the others... It would have been far better for them had they not committed their feelings and secrets to paper—had they followed the epistolary style of a certain American girl. A friend of her father's came to her house to choose himself a wife from among the six sisters. His choice fell on the eldest, Mary, and he told her that he awaited her answer to his request for her hand. Two weeks later her letter reached him, and this was all it contained:

Mr. Stephen Smith:

Yes.

Mary Gould

Or had they followed the way of Rousseau, who wrote his beloved Madame d'Épinay a love letter that did not please him, so he burned it and wrote to her anew:

I shall never be able to tell you how relieved I feel when I see what I have written made fodder for the fire... for on many an occasion, how many conflagrations are kindled by a single small spark!