countrymen unanimously now indorse, and British statesmanship is now pleased to accept.  Yet they were threatened in the streets with the whipping-post and the pillory, with the loss of their ears or their heads,—­and in official instructions, printed in the journals, with transportation to England for trial.  This last threat was serious.  The Government proposed to make arrests under a statute of the reign of Henry VIII.:  actually designed (Lord Mahon’s words) “to draw forth the mouldering edict of a tyrant from the dust where it had long lain, and where it ever deserved to lie, and to fling it” against a band of popular leaders who were wisely and well supporting a most sacred cause.  But these leaders were not actuated by the fanaticism that is always blind and often cruel, nor by the ambition that is unworthy and is then reckless and criminal; but, with a clear apprehension of their ground and definite notions of policy, they went forward with no faltering step.  Their calm and true statement through the press was,—­“It is the part this town has taken on the side of Liberty, and its noble exertions in favor of the rights of America, that have rendered it so obnoxious to the tools of arbitrary power.”  “We are now [October 3, 1768] become a spectacle to all North America.  May our conduct be such as not to disgrace ourselves or injure the common cause!”

Thus wove the solid men of Boston their mantle of enduring glory.

OUT OF THE BODY TO GOD.

  Wearily, wearily, wearily: 
  Sobbing through space like a south-wind,
  Floating in limitless ether,
  Ether unbounded, unfathomed,
  Where is no upward nor downward,
  Island, nor shallow, nor shore: 
  Wearily floating and sobbing,
  Out of the body to God!

  Lost in the spaces of blankness,
  Lost in the deepening abysses,
  Haunted and tracked by the past: 
  No more sweet human caresses,
  No more the springing of morning,
  Never again from the present
  Into a future beguiled: 
  Lonely, defiled, and despairing,
  Out of the body to God!

  Reeling, and tearless, and desperate,
  On through the quiet of ether,
  Helpless, alone, and forsaken,
  Faithless in ignorant anguish,
  Faithless of gasping repentance,
  Measuring Him by thy measure,—­
  Measure of need and desert,—­
  Out of the body to God!

  Soft through the starless abysses,
  Soft as the breath of the summer
  Loosens the chains of the river,
  Sweeping it free to the sea,
  Murmurs a murmur of peace:—­
  “Soul! in the deepness of heaven
  Findest thou shallow or shore? 
  Hast thou beat madly on limit? 
  Hast thou been stayed in thy fleeing
  Out of the body to God?

  “Thou that hast known Me in spaces
  Boundless, untraversed, unfathomed,
  Hast thou not known Me in love? 
  Am I, Creator and Guider,
  Less than My kingdom and work? 
  Come, O thou weary and desolate! 
  Come to the heart of thy Father
  Home from thy wanderings weary,
  Home from the lost to the Loving,
  Out of the body to God!”