THE NEUTRAL GROUND.

ONE hundred years ago, Westchester County, from Byram River to Williams Bridge, was the famous Neutral Ground, the scene of Cooper's Spy and the favorite haunts of the Cow-boys and Skinners. The Cow-boys were British; the Skinners, American skirmishers. Occasionally these gentlemen would have an encounter, but for the most part they preferred to amuse themselves with burning down the houses, and driving off the cattle of their enemies, or - mutato nomine, for it amounts to the same things - in borrowing from their friends. Between the two the Westchesterites had a happy time, and no mistake. Sometimes the same band would be Cow-boys one week, and Skinners the next, helping themselves to everything, now in the name of the Union, and now in that of the King. To say who were the worse, the Cow-boys or the Skinners, would be hard indeed; both were as bad as they could be, - Arcades ambo! They made things so hot in Westchester that Old Nick fled in dismay from his disciples across Long Island Sound. Every place where his fiery hoofs touched the hissing sea there sprang up a black rock, and these now bear the name of the Devil's Stepping-Stones. His Satanic Majesty found in his place of refuge a congenial home, and has ever since resided in the western portion of Long Island.

Wandering among the historic fields of Westchester in a year which will be a "glorious year for America" if bells, cannons, and newspapers can make it so, I caught the Centennial fever! Every historical spot, from the "dead man's swamp" to the battle-field of White Plains, was sought out with patriotic zeal. I even tried to stop and drink at every old farm-house where Washington is said to have refreshed himself, but I gave it up. (G. W. must have been uncommonly thirsty.)

Of all places Putnam's Hill was the most interesting. Here was the spot where Putnam galloped down the church steps at full speed, shaking his fist at the British and receiving, in exchange of compliment, a bullet through his hat; and here, I thought, "the old meeting-house, before which the Americans awaited the charge of the British," must have stood. They waited until the British got unpleasantly near, when Putnam and his men, concluding that "discretion was the better part of valor," rode away. To the right of the meeting-house are the stone steps down which Putnam rode. To the left is the road along which the British dragged their cannon after firing a random shot at the retreating hero. This ball, I was informed, fell on the road, and with half-spent force was rolling along, when a farmer spied it, and, thinking it might be running away from somebody, put out his foot to arrest it; the mass X velocity was too much for the farmer; the ball continued on in the "even tenor of its ways" with about two thirds of his leg. This deliberate appropriation of his own personal property so enraged the honest man that he ran after the ball (pretty good for a man with one leg), and bringing it home put it in his cellar. Like the famous "old lady who lived under the hill," if it has not gone, it is lying there still.