The Virginian

REVOLUTIONARY ANECDOTE.

From the communication of a writer in the Old Colony Memorial, the following is selected, which, it is said, was the subject of much newspaper amusement, and absurd as it may appear, was a fact.

"Some British officers, soon after Gage's arrival in Boston, walking on Beacon-hill after sun set, were affrighted by noises in the air (supposed to be flying bugs and beetles) which they took to be the sound of bullets. They left the hill with great precipitation, spread the alarm in their encampment and wrote terrible accounts to England of being shot at with air guns, as appeared by their letters, extracts of which were soon after published in London papers. Indeed for some time they thought that the Americans were possessed of a kind of magic white powder, which exploded and killed without a report." In that much celebrated and admirable poem of the day, McFingal, the circumstance is thus satirized.

No more the British colonel runs
From whizzing beetles as air guns
Thinks horn-bug bullets. or through fear
Muskitoes takes for musketeers,
Nor 'scapes, as if you'd gain'd supplies
From Belzebub's whole host of flies
No bug these warlike heart appalls;
They better know the sound of Balls