ABSTRACT
This book is by the anonymous author of other works such as The Mountain Cottage and Providence and Grace. It is part of a genre of writing aimed at providing religious instruction to children in appealing ways. It is dedicated “To Mrs. Mary Brown, daughter of the late Serjeant Greenleigh . . . as a Memorial of his worth, and of the high regard entertained for him, by THE AUTHOR.” Ilya Berkovich and Kevin Linch have seen enough in the text to attest to its veracity, with the former identifying the sergeant as “John Greenleigh” and attributing authorship to him. 9 Greenleigh’s memoir appeared at a time when common soldiers’ biographies were gaining a market (see Volume III), and his story suggests that the religious, loving soldier-husbands had become plausible to contemporaries. The tale begins with the author rambling through the countryside and coming upon a cottage among the trees where he “observed an aged figure seated upon a bench at the door”. [16] He noted the man’s “unusually clean appearance”, height, and advanced age, which he later determined to be 74. [17] His daughter and her children welcomed the author as well. He sat down on the bench with the old man, who explained that he had been a soldier for thirty-five years. It later emerged that he had fought in North America in the Seven Years War (1756–1763), and in the West Indies. His military service, alongside the fact that he had found God, encouraged the author to see him as a friend and ask for his story.
