7 Essays 3 
commodity, the higher the price. I am assured 
that the women and little girls have begun to till 
our lands, and they get on not badly. You did 
right to send back to Europe that Dr. Crumerus 
who was so successful in curing dysentery. Don’t 
bother with a man who is subject to looseness of 
the bowels. That disease makes bad soldiers. One 
coward will do more mischief in an engagement than 
ten brave men will do good. Better that they burst 
in their barracks than fly in a battle, and tarnish 
the glory of our arms. Besides, you know that they 
Sixty German dollars levy money was demanded for each man, but 
a little more than half that sum was finally accepted. Every soldier 
killed was to be paid for at the rate of the levy money, and three 
wounded men were to be reckoned as one killed. 
It must have been the recital of these degrading enormities which 
inspired the following anecdote at the expense of royalty, preserved 
by John Adams. He says in his diary: 
“Franklin told us one of his characteristic stories. A Spanish 
writer of certain visions of hell relates that a certain devil, who was 
civil, showed him all the apartments of the place; among others, that 
of the deceased kings. The Spaniard was much pleased at so illustrious 
a sight, and, after viewing them for some time, said he should be glad 
to see the rest of them. ‘The rest!’ said the demon: ‘here are all the 
kings that have ever reigned upon earth, from the creation of it to 
this day. What the devil would the man have?’” 
It is worthy of note here that the castle of Wilhelmshohe, one of the 
most costly country-places, after that of the palace of Versailles, in 
the world, was built by the Elector of Cassel shortly after our revolu- 
tionary war, with the money he received for the loan of his subjects 
to aid England in resisting the emancipation of her American colonies. 
This palace, and the bridges, water-falls, towers, etc., are said to have 
employed 2,000 men fourteen years in their construction, and the 
cost was found to be so enormous that the accounts were destroyed. 
For the 12,000 Hessians sent to fight the Americans and 5,000 more 
sent to resist the invasion of Scotland by the Pretender, England 
paid the Elector of that day 22,000,000 thalers, or about $18,000,000, 
of which the palace of Wilhelmshéhe is the most conspicuous surviving 
memorial. 
It is a fact pregnant with important lessons, that every one of the 
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