Late in February, Jack Irons and Solomon Binkus went east as delegates to a large meeting of the Sons of Liberty in Springfield.  They traveled on snowshoes and by stage, finding the bitterness of the people growing more intense as they proceeded.  They found many women using thorns instead of pins and knitting one pair of stockings with the ravelings of another.  They were also flossing out their silk gowns and spinning the floss into gloves with cotton.  All this was to avoid buying goods sent over from Great Britain.

Jack tells in a letter to his mother of overtaking a young man with a pack on his back and an ax in his hand on his way to Harvard College.  He was planning to work in a mill to pay his board and tuition.

“We hear in every house we enter the stories and maxims of Poor Richard,” the boy wrote in his letter.  “A number of them were quoted in the meeting.  Doctor Franklin is everywhere these days.”

The meeting over, Jack and Solomon went on by stage to Boston for a look at the big city.

They arrived there on the fifth of March a little after dark.  The moon was shining.  A snow flurry had whitened the streets.  The air was still and cold.  They had their suppers at The Ship and Anchor.  While they were eating they heard that a company of British soldiers who were encamped near the Presbyterian Meeting-House had beaten their drums on Sunday so that no worshiper could hear the preaching.

“And the worst of it is we are compelled to furnish them food and quarters while they insult and annoy us,” said a minister who sat at the table.

After supper Jack and Solomon went out for a walk.  They heard violent talk among people gathered at the street corners.  They soon overtook a noisy crowd of boys and young men carrying clubs.  In front of Murray’s Barracks where the Twenty-Ninth Regiment was quartered, there was a chattering crowd of men and boys.  Some of them were hooting and cursing at two sentinels.  The streets were lighted by oil lamps and by candles in the windows of the houses.

In Cornhill they came upon a larger and more violent assemblage of the same kind.  They made their way through it and saw beyond, a captain, a corporal and six private soldiers standing, face to face, with the crowd.  Men were jeering at them; boys hurling abusive epithets.  The boys, as they are apt to do, reflected, with some exaggeration, the passions of their elders.  It was a crowd of rough fellows—­mostly wharfmen and sailors.  Solomon sensed the danger in the situation.  He and Jack moved out of the jeering mob.  Then suddenly a thing happened which may have saved one or both of their lives.  The Captain drew his sword and flashed a dark light upon Solomon and called, out: 

“Hello, Binkus!  What the hell do you want?”

“Who be ye?” Solomon asked.

“Preston.”

“Preston!  Cat’s blood an’ gunpowder!  What’s the matter?”