returned to England. In 1762, he purchased a small quantity of goods, and brought them to New York, and thence to Stratford in Connecticut, where he lived two years. Hence he removed to Derby, where he continued a year or two, and thence to Fairfield. Here he married Miss Lathrop, a lady of a respectable family, belonging to Massachusetts. In 1772, he removed to Wethersfield, and continued in this town about ten years, sustaining the character of a worthy, honest man, and a fair dealer.

In the great controversy which produced the American revolution, he adopted American principles, and characteristically adhered with rigid exactness to whatever he had once adopted. After the continental paper currency began to depreciate, almost every trader sold his goods at an enhanced price. Beadle, however, continued to sell his at original prices, and to receive the depreciated currency in payment. This he kept by him until it had lost its value. The decay of his property rendered him melancholy, as appeared by several letters which he left behind him, addressed to different persons of his acquaintance.

By the same letters and other writings, it appears that he began even to entertain designs of the most desperate nature three years before his death, but was induced to postpone them by a hope that Providence would, in some way or other, change his circumstances for the better, so far as to make it advisable for him to wait for death in the ordinary course of events. But every thing which took place, whether of great or little importance, tended, he says, to convince him that it was his duty to adopt the contrary determination. During all this time he managed his ordinary concerns just as he had heretofore done. His deportment exhibited no appearance of any change in his sentiments, and not one of his acquaintance seems to have suspected that he was melancholy. The very evening before the catastrophe to which I have alluded took place, he was in company with several of his friends, and conversed on grave and interesting subjects, but without the least appearance of any peculiar emotion.

On the morning of the 11th Dec. 1782, he called up a female servant, who slept in the same room with his children, and was the only domestic in his family, and directed

her to arise so softly as not to disturb the children. When she came down, he gave her a note which he had written to Dr. Farnsworth, the family physician, and told her to carry it, and wait until the physician was ready to come with her, informing her at the same time, that Mrs. Beadle had been ill through the night. After the servant had gone, as appeared by the deplorable scene presented to the eye of those who first entered the house, he took an axe, struck each of his children once, and his wife twice, on the head, cut their throats quite across with a carving knife, which he had prepared for the purpose, and then shot himself through the head with a pistol.

Dr. Farnsworth upon opening the note, found that it announced the diabolical purpose of the writer; but supposing it impossible that a sober man should adopt so horrible a design, concluded that he had been suddenly seized by a delirium. Dr. Farnsworth, however, hastened with the note to the Hon. Stephen Mitchell, then chief justice of the state. This gentleman realized the tragedy at once the house was immediately opened, and all the family was found dead in the manner which has been specified.

I knew this family intimately. Mrs. Beadle possessed a very pleasing person, a fine mind, and delightful conversation. The children were unusually lovely and promising. Beadle, in his writings, which were numerous, professed himself a Deist; and declared that man was, in his opinion, a mere machine, unaccountable for his actions, and incapable of either virtue or vice. The idea of a revelation he rejected with contempt. At the same time he reprobated the the vices of others in the strongest terms, and spoke of duty in the very same writings, in language decisively expressive of his belief in the existence of both duty and sin. The jury of the inquest pronounced him to be of sound mind, and brought in a verdict of murder and suicide.

The inhabitants of Wethersfield, frantic with indignation and horror at a crime so unnatural and monstrous, and at the sight of a lady and her children, for whom they had the highest regard, thus butchered by one who ought to have protected them at the hazard of his life: took his

body, as they found it, and dragged it on a small sledge to the bank of the river, without any coffin, with the bloody knife laid upon it, and buried it as they would have buried the carcass of a beast, between high and low water mark.

The corpses of the unhappy family were the next day carried, with every mark of respect, to the church, where a sermon was preached to a very numerous concourse of sincere mourners. They were then interred in the common burying-ground, and in one grave. Mrs. Beadle was thirty-two years of age, and the eldest child about fifteen. Beadle was fifty-two years of age, of small stature, and of an ordinary appearance. He was contemplative, possessed good sense, loved reading, and delighted in intelligent conversation. His manners were gentlemanly, and his disposition hospitable; his countenance exhibited a strong appearance of determination, yet he rarely looked the person with whom he was conversing in the face, but turned his eye aside, the only suspicious circumstance which I observed in his conduct; unless a degree of reserve and mystery, which always attended him, might merit the name of suspicion. Such as he was, he was cheerfully admitted to the best society this town afforded.-Dwight.

RETURN TO SAVAGE LIFE.

PETER ORSAQUETTE was the son of a man of consideration among the Oneida Indians, and was classed among a division of them designated by the appellation of the Wolf tribe. At the close of the revolutionary war, he was noticed by the Marquis de la Fayette, a nobleman, who, to martial prowess and a noble zeal for liberty, united the most philanthropic feelings. After the successful struggle for independence had terminated, it appeared as if the Marquis still aimed at the extension of further benefits to that country, towards the emancipation of which he had so materially contributed. Viewing, therefore, this young savage with peculiar interest, and anticipating the happy results to be derived from

his moral regeneration, he determined, though he was scarcely twelve years old, to take him to France. He arrived at that period when Louis XVI. and Maria Antoinette were still in the zenith of their glory. He was there taught every accomplishment of a gentleman; no care was spared in giving him every necessary instruction; and to this was added the study of music, drawing, and fencing, and he danced with a grace that a Vestris could not but admire. At about eighteen, the period of his separation from a country where he had spent his time so agreeably and so profitably, became necessary; and laden with favors from the Marquis and the miniatures of those friends he left behind, he departed for America. He was buoyed up, perhaps, with the idea that the deep ignorance in which the nation to which he belonged was buried, as well as the Indians of the whole continent, might be dispelled by his efforts, and that he might thus become the proud instrument of civilization to thousands. He came, soon after his arrival to the city of Albany-not the uncivilized savage, not with any of those marks which bespoke a birth in the forest-or years spent toiling through the wilds of an uncultivated country-but possessing a fine commanding figure, an expressive countenance, and an intelligent eye, with a face scarcely indicative of the race from which he was descended. He presented at this period an interesting spectacle; a child of the wilderness was beheld about to proceed to the home of his forefathers, having received the brilliant advantages of a cultivated mind, and on his way to impart the benefits which civilization had given him, to the nation that owned him. It was an opportunity for the philosopher to contemplate, and to reflect on the anticipations of the future good this young Indian might be the means of producing. Shortly after he arrived in Albany, where he visited among the first families, he took advantage of Governor Clinton's journey to Fort Stanwix, to make a treaty with the Indians, to return to his tribe. On the route, Orsaquette amused the company, (among whom were the French minister, Count Monistrers, and several gentlemen of respectability,) by his powers on various instruments of music. At Fort Stanwix, after a long absence of several years, he found himself again with

the companions of his early days, who saw and recognized him; his friends and relations had not forgotten him, and he was welcomed to his house and to his blanket. But what occurred soon after his reception, led but to a too fearful anticipation of an unsuccessful project, for the Oneidas, as if they could not acknowledge Orsaquette, attired in the dress he appeared in before them, and thinking he had assumed it out of shame for the garb and habiliments of his ancestors, tore it from him with a fiendlike ferociousness; daubed on the very paint to which he had been so long unused, and clothed him with the uncouth garments which the tribe held sacred. Their fiery impetuosity, in the performance of the act, showed but too well the bold stand they were about to make against the innovations they supposed Orsaquette was to be the means of introducing into their customs and manners, which, from the venerable antiquity of their structure, it would be sacrilege to destroy the reformed savage was taken back again to his native barbarity, and, as if to complete its own powers, was married.

From that day he was no longer the accomplished Indian, by whom every wish of philanthropy was expected to be realized; he was no longer the instrument by whose power the emancipation of his countrymen from the thraldom of ignorance and superstition was to be effected. From this day Orsaquette was again an inmate of the forest; he was once more buried in his original obscurity; his nation only viewed him as an equal: even the liberal grant of the State, failed of giving him that superior consideration among them, which his civilization had procured for him with the rest of mankind. The superiority acquired from instruction, which it was expected would have excited the emulation of all around him, became of no effect, either from the natural inferiority of the savage mind, or the predetermination of his countrymen, and in a little time, was wholly destroyed. Orsaquette was lost! His moral perdition began from the hour he left Fort Stanwix. Scarcely three months had transpired, before intemperance had marked him for its own, and soon hurried him to the grave; and as if the very transition had deadened all the finer feelings of his nature, the picture the Marquis gave him—the very picture