In the Days of Poor Richard Part 7

The arrival of the mail was an event in Albany those days. Letters had come to be regarded there as common property. They were pa.s.sed from hand to hand and read in neighborhood a.s.semblies. Often they told of great hardship and stirring adventures in the wilderness and of events beyond the sea.

Every week the mail brought papers from the three big cities, which were read eagerly and loaned or exchanged until their contents had traveled through every street. Benjamin Franklin's _Pennsylvania Gazette_ came to John Irons, and having been read aloud by the fireside was given to Simon Grover in exchange for Rivington's _New York Weekly_.

Jack was in a coasting party on Gallows Hill when his father brought him a fat letter from England. He went home at once to read it. The letter was from Margaret Hare--a love-letter which proposed a rather difficult problem. It is now a bit of paper so brittle with age it has to be delicately handled. Its neatly drawn chirography is faded to a light yellow, but how alive it is with youthful ardor:

"I think of you and pray for you very often," it says. "I hope you have not forgotten me or must I look for another to help me enjoy that happy fortune of which you have heard? Please tell me truly. My father has met Doctor Franklin who told of the night he spent at your home and that he thought you were a n.o.ble and promising lad. What a pleasure it was to hear him say that! We are much alarmed by events in America. My mother and I stand up for Americans, but my father has changed his views since we came down the Mohawk together. You must remember that he is a friend of the King. I hope that you and your father will be patient and take no part in the riots and house burnings. You have English blood in your veins and old England ought to be dear to you. She really loves America very much, indeed, if not as much as I love you. Can you not endure the wrongs for her sake and mine in the hope that they will soon be righted? Whatever happens I shall not cease to love you, but the fear comes to me that, if you turn against England, I shall love in vain. There are days when the future looks dark and I hope that your answer will break the clouds that hang over it."

So ran a part of the letter, colored somewhat by the diplomacy of a shrewd mother, one would say who read it carefully. The neighbors had heard of its arrival and many of them dropped in that evening, but they went home none the wiser. After the company had gone, Jack showed the letter to his father and mother.

"My boy, it is a time to stand firm," said his father.

"I think so, too," the boy answered.

"Are you still in love with her?" his mother asked.

The boy blushed as he looked down into the fire and did not answer.

"She is a pretty miss," the woman went on. "But if you have to choose between her and liberty, what will you say?"

"I can answer for Jack," said John Irons. "He will say that we in America will give up father and mother and home and life and everything we hold dear for the love of liberty."

"Of course I could not be a Tory," Jack declared. The boy had studiously read the books which Doctor Franklin had sent to him--_Pilgrim's Progress_, _Plutarch's Lives_, and a number of the works of Daniel Defoe. He had discussed them with his father and at the latter's suggestion had set down his impressions. His father had a.s.sured him that it was well done, but had said to Mrs. Irons that it showed "a remarkable rightness of mind and temper and unexpected apt.i.tude in the art of expression."

It is likely that the boy wrote many letters which Miss Margaret never saw before his arguments were set down in the firm, gentle and winning tone which satisfied his spirit. Having finished his letter, at last, he read it aloud to his father and mother one evening as they sat together, by the fireside, after the rest of the family had gone to bed. Tears of pride came to the eyes of the man and woman when the long letter was finished.

"I love old England," it said, "because it is your home and because it was the home of my fathers. But I am sure it is not old England which made the laws we hate and sent soldiers to Boston. Is it not another England which the King and his ministers invented? I ask you to be true to old England which, my father has told me, stood for justice and human rights.

"But after all, what has politics to do with you and me as a pair of human beings? Our love is a thing above that. The acts of the King or my fellow countrymen can not affect my love for you, and to know that you are of the same mind holds me above despair. I would think it a great hardship if either King or colony had the power to put a tax on you--a tax which demanded my principles. Can not your father differ with me in politics--although when you were here I made sure that he agreed with us--and keep his faith in me as a gentleman? I can not believe that he would like me if I had a character so small and so easily shifted about that I would change it to please him. I am sure, too, that if there is anything in me you love, it is my character.

Therefore, if I were to change it I should lose your love and his respect also. Is that not true?"

This was part of the letter which Jack had written.

"My boy, it is a good letter and they will have to like you the better for it," said John Irons.

Old Solomon Binkus was often at the Irons home those days. He had gone back in the bush, since the war ended, and, that winter, his traps were on many streams and ponds between Albany and Lake Champlain. He came down over the hills for a night with his friends when he reached the southern end of his beat. It was probably because the boy had loved the tales of the trapper and the trapper had found in the boy something which his life had missed, that an affection began to grow up between them. Solomon was a childless widower.

"My wife! I tell ye, sir, she had the eyes an' feet o' the young doe an' her cheeks were like the wild, red rose," the scout was wont to say on occasion. "I orto have knowed better. Yes, sir, I orto. We lived way back in the bush an' the child come 'fore we 'spected it one night.

I done what I could but suthin' went wrong. They tuk the high trail, both on 'em. I rigged up a sled an' drawed their poor remains into a settlement. That were a hard walk--you hear to me. No, sir, I couldn't never marry no other womern--not if she was a queen covered with dimon's--never. I 'member her so. Some folks it's easy to fergit an' some it ain't. That's the way o' it."

Mr. and Mrs. Irons respected the scout, pitying his lonely plight and loving his cheerful company. He never spoke of his troubles unless some thoughtless person had put him to it.

2

That winter the Irons family and Solomon Binkus went often to the meetings of the Sons of Liberty. One purpose of this organization was to induce people to manufacture their own necessities and thus avoid buying the products of Great Britain. Factories were busy making looms and spinning-wheels; skilled men and women taught the arts of spinning, weaving and tailoring. The slogan "Home Made or Nothing," traveled far and wide.

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 a.s.semblage 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 pa.s.sions 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:

"h.e.l.lo, Binkus! What the h.e.l.l do you want?"

"Who be ye?" Solomon asked.

"Preston."

"Preston! Cat's blood an' gunpowder! What's the matter?"

Preston, an old comrade of Solomon, said to him:

"Go around to headquarters and tell them we are cut off by a mob and in a bad mess. I'm a little scared. I don't want to get hurt or do any hurting."

Jack and Solomon pa.s.sed through the guard and hurried on. Then there were hisses and cries of "Tories! Rotten Tories!" As the two went on they heard missiles falling behind them and among the soldiers.

"They's goin' to be bad trouble thar," said Solomon.

"Them lads ain't to blame. They're only doin' as they're commanded.

It's the dam' King that orto be hetch.e.l.led."

They were hurrying on, as he spoke, and the words were scarcely out of his mouth when they heard the command to fire and a rifle volley--then loud cries of pain and shrill curses and running feet. They turned and started back. People were rushing out of their houses, some with guns in their hands. In a moment the street was full.

"The soldiers are slaying people," a man shouted. "Men of Boston, we must arm ourselves and fight."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "The soldiers are slaying people," a man shouted.]

It was a scene of wild confusion. They could get no farther on Cornhill. The crowd began to pour into side-streets. Rumors were flying about that many had been killed and wounded. An hour or so later Jack and Solomon were seized by a group of ruffians.

"Here are the d.a.m.n Tories!" one of them shouted.

"Friends o' murderers!" was the cry of another.

"Le's hang 'em!"

Solomon immediately knocked the man down who had called them Tories and seized another and tossed him so far in the crowd as to give it pause.