The Daily Dispatch: February 3, 1865., [Electronic resource]

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The effect of Example.--playing "Confiscation."

--In the village of Herkimer, New York, last week, three boys, having, no doubt, read of the desolation of the Shenandoah Valley, engaged in playing "confiscation," as they termed it. They entered the house of a lady who was absent from home for a week or two, and spent the most of two whole days in destroying and mutilating everything in reach. They ripped open and broke into pieces sofas and chairs, broke bureaus and mirrors, went into the cellar; taking all its contents in the way of preserves, molasses, vinegar, etc, up into the front parlor, and there spreading them out on carpet, and mixing them up with flour, feathers from the bed and almost every imaginable thing in the house. They took up handfuls of butter and lard and threw them over the walls and furniture, and, in fact, exhausted all their ingenuity to perfectly destroy everything they could find. --They then proceeded to "confiscate" the school-house, entering it through a window. They took down the large maps, tearing them and throwing them into the furnace broke the school-room la into pieces, broke the locks from the doors, and did other damage to a large amount. The story they told of the they had committed, and these they had planning for operations, including the of Mr. Champion, the school for which two of them had provided themselves with pistols, is to be believed of boys, two of whom are not twenty years of age, and the other only fifteen years of age.-- Philadelphia Age.