Excerpt from A Yankee Volunteer<br><br>Kept sacredly in our family is the yellow manuscript of the journal of my great-grandfather, John Allen, who was a volunteer in the war of the Revolution. From those worn pages inscribed in faded ink, I have selected and arranged his account of the beginning of that great struggle, which was interwoven with his own love-story. The chief interest of the narrative, as it seems to me, lies in the fact that it shows the early periods of the Revolution as viewed by a soldier of Massachusetts who shared all the privations and hardships of the struggle. He was a plain and courageous man, devoted to his duty, religious, and true to his strict training. Not a soldier by education or by choice, but rather a man of peace, yet devoted to the cause for which he drew the sword. He came of Puritan stock, and looked askance at the vices and the follies of the world of fashion. He served with gallantry until the close of the war, and rose to dis tinction in the Continental Army.<br><br>In giving these pages to the world, I must plead my own interest in them as an excuse for my hope that they may be of interest to others.<br><br>About the Publisher<br><br>Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com<br><br>This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.