of Sparta were occasioned by their too great solicitude for present tranquillity, and, from an excessive love of peace, they neglected the means of making it sure and lasting.  They ought to have reflected, says Polybius, that, ’as there is nothing more desirable or advantageous than peace, when founded in justice and honor, so there is nothing more shameful, and at the same time more pernicious, when attained by bad measures, and purchased at the price of liberty.’”

Thus in the high Roman fashion she faces danger; yet her sense of fun never deserts her, and in the very next letter she writes, parodying her husband’s documents:—­“The drouth has been very severe.  My poor cows will certainly prefer a petition to you, setting forth their grievances, and informing you that they have been deprived of their ancient privileges, whereby they are become great sufferers, and desiring that these may be restored to them.  More especially as their living, by reason of the drouth, is all taken from them, and their property which they hold elsewhere is decaying, they humbly pray that you would consider them, lest hunger should break through stone walls.”

By midsummer the small hardships entailed by the British occupation of Boston were most vexatious.  “We shall very soon have no coffee, nor sugar, nor pepper, but whortleberries and milk we are not obliged to commerce for,” she writes, and in letter after letter she begs for pins.  Needles are desperately needed, but without pins how can domestic life go on, and not a pin in the province!

On the 14th of September she describes the excitement in Boston, the Governor mounting cannon on Beacon Hill, digging intrenchments on the Neck, planting guns, throwing up breastworks, encamping a regiment.  In consequence of the powder being taken from Charlestown, she goes on to say, a general alarm spread through all the towns and was soon caught in Braintree.  And then she describes one of the most extraordinary scenes in history.  About eight o’clock on Sunday evening, she writes to her husband, at least two hundred men, preceded by a horse-cart, passed by her door in dead silence, and marched down to the powder-house, whence they took out the town’s powder, because they dared not trust it where there were so many Tories, carried it into the other parish, and there secreted it.  On their way they captured a notorious “King’s man,” and found on him two warrants aimed at the Commonwealth.  When their patriotic trust was discharged, they turned their attention to the trembling Briton.  Profoundly excited and indignant though they were, they never thought of mob violence, but, true to the inherited instincts of their race, they resolved themselves into a public meeting!  The hostile warrants being produced and exhibited, it was put to a vote whether they should be burned or preserved.  The majority voted for burning them.  Then the two hundred gathered in a circle round the single lantern, and maintained a rigid silence while the offending papers were consumed.  That done—­the blazing eyes in that grim circle of patriots watching the blazing writs—­“they called a vote whether they should huzza; but, it being Sunday evening, it passed in the negative!”