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WILL you take my life? This was the somewhat startling question put to me by Mrs. Hardinge - better known as Belle Boyd - on my recent introduction to her in Jermyn Street. Madam, said I, a sprite like you, who has so often run the gauntlet by sea and land, who has had so many hair-breadth escapes by flood and field, must bear a 'charmed life: ' I dare not attempt it. Then, placing in my hands a roll of manuscript, she said, Take this; read it, revise it, rewrite it, publish it, or burn it - do what you will. It is the story of my adventures, misfortunes, imprisonments, and persecutions. I have written all from memory since I have been here in London; and, perhaps, by putting me in the third person you can make a book that will be not only acceptable to the public and profitable to myself, but one that will do some good to the cause of my poor country, a cause which seems to be so little understood in England. I took the manuscript, promising to look it over, and return it with an estimate of its merits. I have done so; and hence the publication of Belle Boyd, in Camp and Prison. The work is entirely her own, with the exception of a few suggestions in the shape of footnotes - the simple, unambitious narrative of an enthusiastic and intrepid schoolgirl, who had not yet seen her seventeenth summer when the cloud of war darkened her land, changing all the music of her young life, her peaceful home, sweet home, into the bugle blasts of battle, into scenes of death and most tumultuous sorrow.

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9781466400917

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