CHAPTER t 



The author^ s birthy education^ and military dehul in 

 America in 1775. — Return to England in I777i 

 —Rencontre with the well known Mri. Gooch.— 

 Goes to Lifle in Flanders.— Adventure there y which 

 obliged him to go to Tournay, the frontier town of 

 the empire, 



Among the throng of icribblers, who, with- 

 out any perfonal knowledge of me^ or my 

 family, have done me the honour to write my 

 hiflory, there is a prodigious variety of afler- 

 tion concerning my parentage. Some have af- 

 ferted that tny father was a farmer, fome a 

 tradefrtian, fome a clergyman, arid forhej I be- 

 lieve, will hardly all6w me any father at all. 

 Had my family no more reafon to be afhamed 



B of 



