In about a month after Governor Bernard had solved the problem how such

bankrupts in reputation as Joseph Warren, James Otis, John Hancock, and

Samuel Adams ruled the town as with a rod of iron, there was (June 10,

1768) a real mob. The Board of Customs directed the revenue officers,

for alleged violations of the revenue laws, to seize the sloop Liberty,

owned by Hancock, which they did on a Friday, near the hour of sunset,

as the men were going home from their day's work. And as though the

people contemplated forcible resistance to the law, and would refuse to

respect the arrest, the sloop, after the broad arrow was put upon her,

contrary to the advice of the Collector, was moved, with vulgar and

rough words by the officers, from the wharf where she lay, and moored

under the guns of the Romney. This was the beginning of a war of

epithets, in the usual way of brawls, between the crowd, which kept

increasing, and the custom-house officers,--and, by a sort of natural

law of mobs, grew into a riot, in which the offending officials were

severely pelted with dirt and stones. It is related, that, while Warren,

Hancock, and Samuel Adams were in consultation, the mob broke the

windows of the residences of the Comptroller and Inspector, and dragged

the pleasure-boat of the Collector to the Common, where they burned

it. But here Hancock and other popular leaders went among them, and

succeeded in restoring quiet. These were outrages, and could not be

justified, though the parents of them were the brutal words of the

captain of the Romney and the mob procedure of the officers in taking

the vessel, which was detained three days without any legal process

being filed against her. After all, this was a very slight affair when

compared with the contemporary terrific mobs of London and elsewhere,

which did not spare the highest officials, and, instead of stopping at

breaking glass, pushed into the most costly houses, made complete havoc

of furniture, destroyed life, and were checked only by military force

and bloodshed. In view of these, Colonel Barre might truly say in the

House of Commons, that, in this riot, "Boston was only mimicking the

mother-country."

But the officials, and especially the Commissioners, all but Temple,

chose to consider the mob as quite original and American, and as proof

that the people of Boston were ripe for open revolt. They regarded the

excitement that arose as confirming this view. The Commissioners, who

had not been harmed and were not threatened, were the most violent and

unreasonable; and though the Governor all Saturday and Sunday endeavored

to persuade them "to come into some pacific measures," yet it was all

to no purpose. On Monday morning, they, with the exception of Temple,

notified the Governor by a card that they were going on board the

Romney, and desired the necessary orders for them to use the Castle; and

they took their families with them. They immediately sent Hallowell off

to England, and advised the Lords of the Treasury,--"Nothing but the

immediate exertion of military power will prevent an open revolt of this

town, which may probably spread throughout the Colonies." Temple, and

a number of the subordinates of the Board, remained in town, were not

molested, and gathered in the revenue which importers continued to pay.

The town regarded the manner of the seizure of the Liberty as a gross

affront, and coupled with it the recent cases impressment; and on

Monday things looked threatening. But the popular leaders came out, put

themselves at the head of the movement, and guided the indignation along

the safe channels of law, in such a manner that it resulted in nothing

more violent than petition and remonstrance, calmly, but strongly,

expressed through the town-meeting. It is not necessary to detail what

took place at the Liberty Tree, in Faneuil Hall, and in the Old South,

where the Patriots held the greatest meetings, so it is written, that

were ever seen on the American continent At their commencement, on

Tuesday morning, at the Liberty Tree, the Governor, whose town-residence

was the Province House, was at his country-seat at Jamaica Plain, in

Roxbury. He received such startling advices from his friends, as to the

doings of the Sons of Liberty, that he sent one of his own sons

into town with a message desiring the immediate presence of

Lieutenant-Governor Hutchinson, as he was "in expectation of very

important news from town," and such as would make it necessary for

him to withdraw. While with perturbed nerves he awaited Hutchinson's

arrival, he must have been surprised to see moving towards his house,

not a Parisian populace, pell-mell, flourishing liberty-caps and pikes,

or even a growling London mob, but a peaceful train of eleven cozy

chaises, conveying a very respectable committee from a public meeting,

at the head of which were Warren, Otis, and Samuel Adams. They bore a

petition to the Governor from the town, which protested against the

right of Parliament to tax the Colonies, and denied the legality of

press-gangs in Massachusetts. "I received them," are the Governor's

words, "with all possible civility, and having heard their petition, I

talked very freely with them, but postponed giving a formal answer till

the next day, as it should be in writing. I then had wine handed round,

and they left me highly pleased with their reception, especially

that part of them which had not been used to an interview with me."

Considering the Governor's state of mind, the committee could not have

been more highly pleased when they left than he was when they arrived;

but his perturbations were over when Hutchinson came in, and there was

no occasion for unusual political action.

The Governor's reply to the town, on the next day, was conciliatory. The

petition which the committee presented to him was regarded by Hutchinson

as going beyond anything that had yet been advanced in the way of a

practical denial of Parliamentary authority; but the Governor wisely

declined to argue the vexed question of that day, and as wisely promised

redress for the press-gang outrage, all of which was highly satisfactory

to the meeting. The chairman, James Otis, made the reply more

satisfactory by acknowledging the Governor's hospitality. Still the

men who filled the Old South to overflowing did not omit the duty of

stern-worded protest against the aggressions of Parliament; and in an

elaborate and admirable paper, marked with Joseph Warren's energy of

soul, they alleged the unconstitutional imposition of taxes as the

groundwork of the recent troubles. It was oppression, and it "came down

upon the people like an armed man, though they were the subjects of an

empire which was the toast of the nations for freedom and liberty."

It was now the current rumor that this and other aggressions were to be

enforced by arms. The idea was abhorrent to the people. A committee, to

whom was referred the subject of the rumored introduction of troops,

reported to the meeting a resolve to the effect that whoever had urged

this measure was "a tyrant in his heart, a traitor and an open enemy to

his country"; but though this resolve was advocated by William Cooper,

the faithful and intrepid town-clerk, and by others, the resolution

finally adopted declared only that any person who should solicit or

promote the importation of any troops at this time was an enemy to the

town and the Province, and a disturber of the peace and good order of

both.

The Governor was now on good terms with the people. He was in the habit

of saying that nothing which he had done would bring troops into the

town,--that he was desirous of promoting harmony between the Province

and the mother-country,--and the memorial to the Ministry in their

behalf contained the assurance that they bore "the same sentiments of

loyalty and duty towards their gracious King, and the same reverence for

the great council of the nation, the British Parliament, as ever." This

was the truth, touchingly expressed. The Bostonians never considered

the Parliament to be such an embodiment of Imperialism that it

could rightfully mould their local institutions, or control their

congregations and their town-meetings, their highways and their homes;

and always looked upon the Crown as the symbol of a national power that

would shield their precious body of customs and rights. Thus what the

Governor said on the paramount point of nationality met with an honest

response from those to whom it was addressed. "I am myself," he wrote,

(June 18,) "on better terms with the people than usual. A civil

treatment of a petition of the town to me, a plain and friendly answer

thereto, and some real service by interposing with the men-of-war, have

given me a little popularity. But it won't last a week. As soon as I

have executed the orders I have just received from the Secretary of

State, in the General Assembly, there will be an end of my popularity;

and I don't know whether I sha'n't be obliged to act like the captain of

a fire-ship,--provide for my retreat before I light my fusee."

But he quietly lighted his fusee, when the horizon became all aglow with

what to the Loyalists was the lurid flame of destruction, but to the

Patriots was as light from heaven. The occasion is too well known to

need more than a glance. The House of Representatives, on the eleventh

of February, had sent its famous Circular Letter to the other Colonies,

proposing, that, in the present crisis, there should be unity of action

among them. The Loyalists charged that this was an attempt to organize a

Confederacy, and therefore was revolutionary; the Patriots averred that

its sole object was to unite in petition and remonstrance for redress

of grievances, and therefore that it was constitutional; the Ministry

regarded the act as in the last degree dangerous to the prerogative, and

ordered Governor Bernard to demand of the House to recall or rescind

this Circular Letter. The communication of this order was what the

Governor called lighting his fusee. His daily letters show precisely his

state of mind as he touched it off. He saw a determination to resist

Great Britain; he was told that the people were making preparations to

do it; and he wrote to his relative, Viscount Barrington, who had the

_entrée_ of the royal closet,--sending the letter by Hallowell,--with

rather more than the usual emphasis of error,--"I am sure that things

are coming apace to a crisis, and I fear the Bostonians will get the

start of you." In this mood the Governor sent in the arrogant British

demand. The House, (June 26, 1768,) by the memorable vote of ninety-two

to seventeen, flatly refused to comply with the royal order; whereupon

the Governor, as the punishment, dissolved the General Court; and for

many months Massachusetts was without a legislature.

These were of the order of events that take fast hold of the public

mind. Far and wide and profound was the sensation; and the unity of the

response from abroad, made known to the people through the press, was

truly inspiring. "We all rejoice," says a letter, "in what your Assembly

has done, and join in acclamations to the glorious Ninety-Two. 'Twas

certainly the most important case an American assembly ever acted upon."

This brief narrative is uncommonly suggestive. The letter of Bernard is

a testimony to the kindly disposition of the people, who were ready to

return much gratitude for little service, and who only asked to be left

to the measure of freedom that was enjoyed by their brethren in England;

the magnificent No which the House gave to the royal command shows

how they could maintain their self-respect, and stand by their local

government; and the general indorsement of the action of the House

in other Colonies indicates a community of interest in each other's

destiny.

The replies of local legislatures, as they were printed from time to

time in the journals, filled the hearts of the Boston patriots with joy.

Hutchinson, who kept constant watch of these things, and who rightly

estimated the importance of the formation of public opinion,

wrote,--"The action of the other Colonies keeps up the spirit of our

demagogues. I am told Adams and Cooper say it is the most glorious day

they ever saw." They saw a general manifestation of a spirit of unity in

the support of common rights. Without union they knew they were nothing;

with union they felt equal to all things. Thus here were working two of

the elements of our political system, local self-government and American

nationality.

The June mob, the public meetings, the vote of the House of

Representatives, and the union feeling supplied zealous Loyalists with

rich material to pervert into fresh argument for the necessity of

troops to keep the people in order. It was promptly seized upon. The

Commissioners set out the Boston tumults as the heralds of a rebellion

that had begun its course over the continent. They not only sent a batch

of falsehoods to England by Hallowell, but they also sent letters to

General Gage, the Commander-in-Chief, whose head-quarters were in New

York, with a request for troops, and to Commodore Hood at Halifax asking

for more ships. General Gage was surprised at not receiving letters

from the Governor, but with a soldier's promptness he at once (June 24)

tendered to Governor Bernard all the force he might need to preserve the

public peace; yet regarding it as improper to order the King's forces

into a Province to quell a riot without a requisition from the

Executive, he frankly advised the Governor to this effect. But the

Governor did not want troops to quell a riot, and said so; and in answer

to the tender, returned a long and heavy disquisition, showing why,

though he considered troops essential to the promotion of the good of

his country, he did not and would not make a formal requisition for any,

and thus, all unconsciously, betrayed and condemned himself at every

word,--for while he was talking of country, he was thinking of self.

Commodore Hood, believing that the good people of Boston were actually

on the eve of a revolt, and that the precious lives of the Commissioners

were hardly safe in Castle William, where they now were, "immediately

sent two more ships," which, he says, "secured the Castle from all

attempts at surprising it." But, according to Hutchinson, though the

people were mad, yet they were not Don Quixotes, and though a few might

have talked of attacking it, yet the Castle was in no danger, even

though no one of His Majesty's ships had been in the harbor.

The ships promptly arrived, and were moored about Castle William; but no

troops appeared, though early in July the Governor felt sure they were

ordered here from Halifax, from the fact that General Gage sent a batch

of despatches, under cover to him, addressed to Lieutenant-Colonel

Dalrymple, the senior British officer in command at that station. On

forwarding these despatches, Bernard wrote to Dalrymple,--"You know that

my situation requires that I should appear to know as little in the

proceedings of this kind as can well be. I should, therefore, be obliged

to you, if in conducting a business of this kind you would let me appear

a stranger to it until it becomes necessary to communicate it to me

officially. In the mean time any private hints, conveyed to me by a safe

hand, will be acceptable."

A straightforward British officer must have conceived contempt for such

an official, even before subsequent action on the part of this official

elicited an expression of it.

The Governor was doomed to disappointment. The orders which he

transmitted merely placed troops in readiness to proceed to Boston on

his requisition, which requisition he steadily refused to make, and he

wrote,--"The crisis awaits the arrival of the troops, and I now learn

they are not coming." He next officially laid the tender of the

Commanding General before the Council, when he found that its members

were unanimously of the opinion that troops were not required. Now this

body contained decided Loyalists; and this unanimity of opinion appears

to have amazed the Governor. He advised Lord Barrington, that the fact

convinced him that he could "no longer depend upon the Council for the

support of the small remains of royal and parliamentary power now

left, the whole of which had been gradually impeached, arraigned, and

condemned under his eye"; which was arrant party-misrepresentation. He

further expressed the opinion that the sending of troops to Boston ought

to be a business of quartering and cantonment. "It is no secret," he

said, "that this ought to have been done two years and a half ago. If it

had, there would have been no opposition to Parliament now, and above

all, no such combinations as threaten (but I hope vainly) the overthrow

of the British Empire. If provision was to have been made against

faction and sedition, the head-quarters should have been secured."

Instead of this, "Boston has been left under a trained mob from August

14, 1765, to this present July 23, 1768."

While these things had been going on here, the die as to Massachusetts

and Boston had been cast in the British cabinet, by the conclusion to

place a military force at the command of the Governor. This decision was

reached before the June meeting or the June riot; and it is quite in

vain to seek the real reason for it in what appears on paper about the

processions on the eighteenth of March or the equally insignificant

prior manifestations. Hutchinson and Gage and other Loyalists admitted

that all these were trifles. The Ministers were no strangers to mobs;

even if there had been as violent ones in Boston as there were in

London, they could not have acted upon them as proofs of disloyalty.

Besides the calumnies that made out the popular leaders to be

anarchists, that perverted love of the local government into a

desire for independence, there was one that touched the pride of the

mother-country; for the Loyalists said of the Bostonians,--(there

is nothing like the language of the time to embody the spirit of

the time,)--that "every dirty fellow, just risen from his kennel,

congratulated his neighbor on their glorious victory over England; and

they were so intoxicated with their own vast importance, that the lowest

wretch among them conceived himself superior to the first English

merchant." This was falsehood; for it is certain that the joy for

the repeal of the Stamp Act was joy for harmony restored between the

Colonies and Great Britain.

Thus, owing to such representations, while the people of Boston were

deliberating in the great town-meetings of June, orders were on their

way to General Gage, whose head-quarters were in New York, to place

troops in Castle William, to station a detachment in Boston, and to

keep a naval force in the harbor. The despatch of Lord Hillsborough,

addressed to Governor Bernard, communicating this conclusion, was

elaborate and able, and laid down in full the policy of the Government.

The instructions were based on the pretence that Boston was "in

possession of a licentious and unrestrained mob"; that it was animated

by a disposition "to resist the laws and to deny the authority of

Parliament"; and that the alleged "illegal and unwarrantable measures

which had been pursued in opposing the officers of the revenue in the

execution of their duty, and for intimidating the civil magistrates,

showed the necessity of strengthening the hands of the Government."

This despatch refers to five of Bernard's letters as containing such

representations. It is worthy of remark, that Lord Hillsborough sharply

rebuked the Governor for having all along asked the advice of the

Council as to the introduction of the troops; for to admit such a

function in the Council, he said, was to concede a power inconsistent

with the Constitution. "It is you," are the official words, "to whom the

Crown has delegated its authority, and you alone are responsible for the

best use of it."

This action was unknown to the popular leaders, and the month of August

passed in doubt as to whether the Ministers would be persuaded to

quarter troops in Boston. The town was remarkably quiet, when the

Governor issued (August 3, 1768) a proclamation against riots, and

calling all magistrates to suppress tumults and unlawful assemblies, and

to restore vigor and firmness to the Government. "It cannot be wondered

at," said "Determinatus," (August 8,) in the "Gazette," "if the

mother-country should think that we are in a state of confusion equal

to what we hear from the orderly and very polite cities of London and

Westminster. There, we are told, is the weavers' mob, the seamen's mob,

the tailors' mob, the coal-miners' mob, and some say the clergy's mob;

and, in short, it is to be feared the whole kingdom, always excepting

the * * * * and P----t, will unite in one general scene of tumult.

I sincerely pray for the peace and prosperity of the nation and her

colonies, whose interest, if she would open her eyes, she would clearly

discern to be undivided." The journals during this month have full

details of these mobs. The coal-heavers of Wapping destroyed property

and committed murders, and two thousand keel-men and sailors of

Sunderland fairly beat off the King's troops that were sent against them

from Newcastle. Happily such want of reverence for law was unknown in

Boston or the Province. Still the Governor kept on representing that he

was under the control of a mob; and another day of rejoicing gave

him another opportunity of misrepresenting the people. This was the

fourteenth of August, being the third celebration of the uprising

against the Stamp Act. In the procession on this occasion there was one

man who had had a hand in the attack on the Lieutenant-Governor's house

on the twenty-sixth of August, and had in consequence incurred the

penalty of death, and who was now celebrating his mob-exploits; and at

the head of the procession were two Boston merchants, who thus were

charged with countenancing mobs. The Governor well knew that the

Patriots abhorred the outrages of the twenty-sixth of August as much as

they gloried in the uprising against the stamp-duty on the fourteenth of

August. Hutchinson, moreover, was a good deal disturbed by the public

affronts put upon the Commissioners, who were still at the Castle,

though their subordinates were in town collecting the revenue. The

Cadets, on motion of Hancock, voted to exclude them from the usual

public dinner; and the town voted to refuse the use of Faneuil Hall for

the dinner, unless with the stipulation that the Commissioners were not

to be invited. Such proceedings, with petitions and resolutions, made

nearly the whole outrage of the Boston "trained mob" that the Governor

talked about. Yet he affected to be in fear of an insurrection, and on

the last day of the month whiningly wrote,--"The town is at present just

as defensible as it was two years ago,--not a sergeant's guard of real

soldiers within two hundred miles of it."

In a few days after, on a Saturday night, William Sheriff, aide-de-camp

to General Gage, arrived in town from New York, which he left on

Wednesday morning, bearing the following letter to Governor Bernard, the

original of which is indorsed, "Received Sept. 3."

* * * * *

THOMAS GAGE TO FRANCIS BERNARD.

"New York, Aug. 31,1768.

"Sir,--It is not necessary to trouble you with any answers to your

letters, and I only acknowledge the receipt of them.

"I am now to acquaint you that I have received orders to send forces

to Boston, and would regulate the number to be sent agreeable to your

opinion of the number that will be necessary. Captain Sheriff, my

aide-de-camp, goes to Boston under pretence of private business, and

will deliver you this letter. He is directed to settle this matter with

you; and you may rely on his discretion, prudence, and secrecy. I have

intrusted him with a letter of orders to the commander of his Majesty's

forces at Halifax to embark with the 14th Regiment, and left a blank in

the letter for Captain Sheriff to fill up with the like order for the

29th Regiment, in case you shall judge it proper to have the whole or

any part of the 29th Regiment, as well as the 14th, and not think one

regiment a sufficient force. When you shall have fixed the matter with

Captain Sheriff, you will be so good as to send me immediate notice,

that I may without delay write you a public letter to demand quarters

for the numbers that will be ordered into your Province. The contents of

this, as well as your answer, and everything I now transact with you,

will be kept a profound secret, at least on this side of the Atlantic.

"It is submitted in my letters, whether it would not be advisable, as

troops will probably continue at Boston, to take possession of Castle

William, which, being a place of some strength, may in case of emergency

be of great service, and it is said to belong to the Crown.

"You will be so good as to fix with Captain Sheriff, whether you would

have the whole, or any part of the troops ordered to Boston, quartered

in Castle William. If you should be of opinion that troops stationed

there will not answer the intention of sending them to Boston, for the

purposes of enforcing a due obedience to the laws, and protecting and

supporting the civil magistrates and the officers of the Crown in the

execution of their duty, part may be stationed there, and part in the

town. Should you require both the regiments from Halifax, one of them,

or three or four companies of one of them, might be quartered in the

Castle, and you would then have an entire regiment and five companies of

another in the city. I mention this, but leave it to your determination;

and you will regulate this matter with Captain Sheriff according to the

number of troops you think necessary to be sent to Boston. You will be

pleased to give me notice of your resolves on this head.

"I don't know if you can supply bedding for such of the troops as you

would choose to be lodged in the Castle; if not, Captain Sheriff will

write to Lieutenant-Colonel Dalrymple to bring bedding with him from

Halifax, sufficient for the number of men you shall fix upon for the

garrison of Castle William.

"I have the honor to be with great regard,

"Sir,

"Your most obedient,

"Humble servant,

"TH'S. GAGE."

Such was the mode in which the Sam Adams Regiments were ushered into

Boston According to this letter, the Governor himself, substantially,

gave the order that brought all but the Fourteenth Regiment,--an order

which was to "be kept a profound secret, at least on this side of the

Atlantic."

At this time the mass of the citizens Boston were very bitter and

suspicious towards all who were in any way supposed to be concerned in

urging the introduction of troops among them; because troops had come to

be looked upon as means of subjugating them to laws to which they never

would give their consent through their representatives. The fiery Josiah

Quincy, Jr., would say,--"Before the freeborn sons of the North will

yield a general and united submission to any tyrannic power on earth,

fire and sword, desolation and ruin, will ravage the land." The intrepid

Samuel Adams would say,--"Before the King and Parliament shall dragoon

us, and we become slaves, we will take up arms and our last drop of

blood." The calm Andrew Eliot would say,--"You cannot conceive of our

distress: to have a standing army! What can be worse to a people who

have tasted the sweets of liberty?" Hutchinson wrote,--"Many of the

common people were in a frenzy, and talked of dying in defence of their

liberties," while "too many above the vulgar countenanced and encouraged

them." Such was the intensity of the public feeling; such the

earnestness with which liberty was ranked above material prosperity. It

was now to be seen whether the American cause was to suffer shipwreck on

the rock of premature insurrection, or whether it was to be led on by

such cautious and wise steps as develop into the majesty of revolution.

The present public alarm was occasioned by vague statements from abroad

or rumors started at home as to the coming of a military force. Troops

were ordered in from the outposts of Canada to Halifax; an unusual naval

force was gathering at that station; it was said that the destination of

both was Boston: but the Governor persisted in denying that he had

done anything that would bring troops here, and kept on playing the

know-nothing. This created a painful suspense, and, to cool observers,

the policy of the Government appeared inexplicable. But however deep

may have been the indignation of the people at the prospect of military

rule, it was no part of the plan of the popular leaders, if troops came

here, to resist the landing, or to allow the rash spirits, who are ever

ready for any imprudence, to do so; but their object was to fix in the

public mind a just sense of the rights thus violated, to guide the

general indignation into a safe channel of action, and thus turn the

insult to the benefit of the general cause.

Two days after the Governor received the letter of General Gage, a

communication appeared in the "Boston Gazette," under the head of

"READER! ATTEND!" which arraigned, with uncommon spirit and boldness,

the course of the officials who were urging the policy of arbitrary

power, as having a direct tendency "to dissolve the union between Great

Britain and her colonies." It proposed to remonstrate against this

policy to the King, and at the same time to declare that "there was

nothing this side eternity they dreaded more than being broken off

from his government." In urging resistance to this course the author

said,--"We will put our lives in our hands, and cry to the Judge of all

the Earth, who will do right."

This paper, like many similar appeals in that well-stored Liberty

arsenal, the "Boston Gazette," had the genuine Liberty ring, yet there

was in it nothing very unusual; but the royal circle at the Province

House lived in an unusual atmosphere, and this article came sounding in

among them like a great moral Dahlgren. "In the Boston Gazette of the

fifth instant," the Governor, with his usual acuteness, wrote to the

Secretary of State, "appeared a paper containing a system of politics

exceeding all former exceedings. Some took it for the casual ravings of

an occasional enthusiast. But I persuaded myself that it came out of the

cabinet of the faction, and was preparatory to some actual operations

against the Government. In this persuasion, I considered, that, if the

troops from Halifax were to come here on a sudden, there would be no

avoiding an insurrection, which would at least fall upon the crown

officers, if it did not amount to an opposition to the troops. I

therefore thought it would be best that the expectation of the troops

should be gradually communicated, that the heads of the faction might

have time to consider well what they were about, and prudent men

opportunity to interpose their advice." Accordingly (September 8) he

"took an occasion to mention to one of the Council, in the way of

discourse, that he had private advice that troops were ordered to

Boston, but had no public orders about it"; and before night, the

Governor adds, the intelligence was all over the town.

Before night, too, a petition, addressed to the Selectmen, was

circulating all over the town, and large numbers were affixing their

names to it. It prayed that the town might be legally convened to

require of the Governor the reasons for his declaration that three

regiments might be daily expected, and "to consider of the most wise,

consistent, and salutary measure suitable to meet the occasion." The

Selectmen acted promptly, (John Hancock was on the Board,) and summoned

the citizens to meet on the Monday following. In this way, openly before

men, not covertly like a body of conspirators, did the solid men and

prudent men of Boston prepare for council.

Though the Governor averred that his object, in his verbal

communication, was to give a chance for an interposition of such sound

advice, yet to Lord Hillsborough he actually represented the call

and the movement of these men as proofs that the long-contemplated

insurrection was now at hand. He informed the Secretary, that on the

next evening (Friday) there was a large private meeting, where "it was

the general opinion that they should raise the country and oppose the

troops"; and that on the succeeding evening (Saturday) there was a very

small private meeting at the house of one of the chiefs, where it was

resolved "to surprise and take the Castle the Monday night following."

The Governor evidently had misgivings about its being the fact that such

an object was planned. "I don't," he said, "relate these as facts,

but only as reported and believed." I have found no account of the

Friday-evening meeting, which undoubtedly was a meeting of one of the

political clubs of the time; but on Saturday evening James Otis and

Samuel Adams met at Warren's residence in Hanover Street (on the site

of the American House) for conference as to Monday's meeting,--for

instance, to draw up the resolves and decide upon the action that might

be expedient: whatever may have been the warmth of expression of popular

leaders, or the wishes of extremists among the people, the whole object

of this conference was to concentrate and use only the moral force of

public opinion; and there is not a trace of a design of insurrection in

all the known private correspondence of these patriots.

However, the belief in insurrection, at this time, appears to have been

as strongly rooted in the minds of prominent Loyalists as it was in the

mind of the again perturbed Governor. Signs of what is thought to be

near at hand are apt to be seen or fancied; and it was so in this case.

Somebody had put a turpentine barrel in the skillet that hung at the top

of the beacon-pole on Beacon Hill. Now it had been designed, for a

long time, by such a mode of bonfire, to alarm the country, in case of

invasion. This fact was put with another fact, namely, that the beacon

had been newly repaired; and from the two facts was drawn the startling

inference, that matters were ready for a rising in the town, and for

giving the concerted signal to summon in the country to aid this

rising,--and this, too, when the Governor had not a sergeant's guard

of real soldiers nearer than two hundred miles. And now members of the

Council flocked to the Governor and demanded a meeting of this imposing

body; and a meeting was promptly held at a gentleman's residence

half-way between Boston and Jamaica Plain, where, after grave debate

about taking down the barrel, it was finally voted to make a formal

demand on the Board of Selectmen to order it to be done. On the next

day, (Sunday,) the Fathers of the Town held a special meeting to

consider the vote of the Council, which resulted in declining to act on

this matter of taking down the barrel as too trivial. About the hour of

dining, on this day, however, Sheriff Greenleaf gave some peace to the

frightened officials by repairing to Beacon Hill with half a dozen

others and removing the obnoxious barrel, which proved to be empty. The

public did not hear the last of this affair for months, as may be seen

in the affidavits about it, afterwards, in the journals.

There was really no ground for all this alarm. The popular leaders, from

the excited state of the public mind, might have been apprehensive of an

explosion from the rash, which they meant, if possible, to prevent, and

if it came, to repress; but the Loyalist leaders would have it that

there was a deep-laid plot even for a revolution. "It is now known," is

Governor Bernard's malicious misrepresentation, as he reviewed these

scenes and justified the introduction of the troops, "that the plan was

to seize the Governor and Lieutenant-Governor and take possession of the

treasury, and then set up their standard." He said that five hundred men

had been enrolled to take the Castle, and it was likely that the names,

at least of the chief of them, would be discovered. There is no such

list in thirteen folio volumes of his correspondence. Hutchinson's

misrepresentation was as mischievous, but more cautious; for he assured

his British correspondents that at the time when the troops landed in

Boston the Province was on the brink of ruin, and that their arrival

prevented the most extravagant measures,--though, he said, he did not

certainly know what the dark designs of the heads of the opposition

were.

On the morning of the town-meeting, (September 12,) Governor Bernard

believed that the popular leaders were resolved not merely to capture

the crown officials, but to resume the first charter, which, he said,

had not a single ingredient of royalty in it. But while he was looking

for insurrection, a committee of the highest respectability waited on

him, and asked him to be pleased to communicate to the town the grounds

and assurances on which he had intimated his apprehensions that one or

more regiments might he daily expected. On the next day the Governor

replied in writing,--"My apprehensions that some of his Majesty's troops

are to be expected in Boston arise from information of a private nature;

I have received no public letters notifying to me the coming of such

troops." The information came by letter from the only official in the

country who could order troops into Boston, and yet he said it was

private; according to this letter, he must have decided on the number of

troops that were to come, and yet he prattled about apprehensions. Such

was the way in which a royal Governor of the Stuart school dealt with

a people filled with patriotic concern for their country. It is the

dealing of a small man. If he can escape the charge of deliberate

falsehood, it is only, on demurrer, by the plea of a contemptible

quibble.

It is not necessary here to follow the noble popular demonstrations that

rounded off by a delegate convention, which, at the simple request of

Boston, assembled in Faneuil Hall. The officials, who had long played

falsely with a liberty-loving, yet loyal people, now fairly quailed

before the whirlwind of their righteous indignation. Two days after

Bernard had "intimated his apprehensions," as though steps had

been taken to countermand the order for the troops, the following

semi-official doubt appeared in the "News-Letter":--"It is conjectured

that there are troops to come here; but at present we can find no

authentic accounts of it, nor that any person has declared that they

actually are, though there is great probability that they will soon be

here, if ever." This, from a Loyalist source, is a singularly worded

paragraph, and is richly Delphic.

The circular letter which Boston addressed (September 14) to the towns,

calling a Convention, accurately states the object of the military force

that was now expected:--"The design of these troops is, in every one's

apprehension, nothing short of enforcing by military power the execution

of Acts of Parliament, in the forming of which the Colonies have not,

and cannot have, any constitutional influence. This is one of the

greatest distresses to which a free people can be reduced." The object

of the Convention is as accurately stated to be, "to prevent any sudden

and unconnected measures," and to act in every constitutional way for

the preservation of invaluable rights. The Governor, as usual, acting

on his theory of insurrection, held that the Convention was designed to

mature plans for it; and he wrote (September l6) to Lord Hillsborough as

to his own plans,--"For my own part, if I had any place of protection

to resort to, I would publish a proclamation against the assembling of

the Convention, but I dare not take so spirited a step without first

securing my retreat"; and, with unusual good sense, he expressed "much

doubt whether the force already ordered by General Gage, namely, two

regiments, would be sufficient" to fight off the original charter, and

to keep the crown officers in their places. There was a small party who

were in favor of resuming the old charter; but the union of the towns of

Massachusetts, and then the union of all the Colonies, for the sake of

continued union with Great Britain, was the key of the action of the

leaders who were the exponents of the Patriots. They did not contemplate

going into acts of government; and neither now nor in the future did

they ever contemplate "sudden and unconnected measures."

Three days later (September 19) Governor Bernard threw off all disguise.

He formally announced to the Council that troops were coming, and asked

this body to provide them quarters. And now began a long, irritating,

and arrogant endeavor on the part of the Executive to browbeat the local

authorities in the matter of providing quarters for the troops. The

official record is voluminous. The Patriots kept strictly to the law,

and won a moral victory: the royal officials persisted in virtually

urging burly British will as law, and suffered the shame of an

ignominious defeat. The Governor thought the Government had received

a blow that made it reel; and, in a garrulous, complaining letter,

supplies not only a vivid idea of the whole of this struggle, but an

idea of his well-deserved individual mortification. "The account up

to this time," (October 30, 1768,) he wrote, "will end in my having

employed myself from September nineteenth to October twenty-sixth, that

is, thirty-eight days, in endeavoring to procure quarters for the two

regiments here to no purpose. For having during this time been bandied

about from one to another, I at length got positive refusals from every

one that I could apply to, that is, the Council, the Selectmen, and the

Justices of the Peace; upon which the General, [Gage,] who came here on

purpose, has found himself obliged to hire and fit up buildings at the

expense of the Crown, by which means the two regiments are at length got

into good occasional barracks."

The new scene of an American States-General in Faneuil Hall,--so the

royal Governor and Parliamentary orators termed the Convention,--a

manifestation of the rising power of the people, was followed by the

spectacle of an imposing naval force in the harbor. The Sam Adams

Regiments, sent on the mission of warring against the republican idea,

were proudly borne to Boston by fifteen British men-of-war, which were

moored (September 29) in well-chosen fighting positions around the

north end of the quiet, but glorious town. In the evening the curious

Bostonians put out in their boats from the wharves to get a near view of

the ships. There were great rejoicings on board. The sky was brilliant

with the rockets that were shot off from the decks, and the air

resounded with the music of the bands. It was noticed that the favorite

piece seemed to be "the Yankee tune": it was played by the regimental

bands when Earl Percy led a British force out of Boston on Lexington

morning, but no mention is made of its being performed when this force

returned in the evening of that famous day, or when the Sam Adams

Regiments left the town.

The King's troops landed on the first day of October. Though it had

been printed in England that ten thousand men were enrolled to oppose

them,--though the local officials had predicted that the event would

occasion a crisis in affairs,--though John Bull had been so abominably

imposed upon that he as much expected to see a mob resist the landing as

he lately expected the mob would resist the delivery of the Confederate

Commissioners,--and though not merely ministerial circles, but all

England, were looking forward with serious apprehensions to the

result,--yet the day was so tame that little history was made worth

relating. As the spectators on board the ships, about noon, were looking

for a battle-scene, they saw only a naval and military show. The ships

of war were prepared for action by loading the guns and putting springs

on the cables. The troops, after sixteen rounds of powder and ball had

been served out to them, entered the boats. Rude artists were looking

on, and sketching the peaceful display, setting down each boat and ship

and island, with view undisturbed by the smoke of battle or even of

salute. They did not notice, however, that the commander of the land

force, Lieutenant-Colonel Dalrymple, went ashore privately, at about

eleven o'clock, and sauntered over the town. He met no local militia;

he saw nor horns nor hoofs of insurrection; he saw not even the royal

Governor, for he had retired to Jamaica Plain; and instead of a cordial

Executive greeting and proper directions as to what to do, he found that

everything was left to himself. He knew that neither the Council nor the

Governor had provided quarters for his command; but from the doings

or non-doings of this day he conceived feelings towards the runaway

official which he expressed by words, at the time, "full as plain as

pleasant," and afterwards officially in writing to his superiors.

Bernard met Dalrymple's intimations of cowardice by the truthful

allegation that there was not the least danger of insurrection, and of

want of attention by the mean allegation that the Colonel was chagrined

because he was not complimented with a dinner.

An hour after the Commander made his reconnoissance, about noon, the

boats moved in fine order towards the Long Wharf, so termed as being a

noble commercial pier running far out into the Bay. Here the Fourteenth

Regiment, under Colonel Dalrymple, landed, and, having formed, marched,

in the words of the time, with drums beating, fifes playing, and colors

flying, up King Street (now State Street) to the Town-House, where it

halted. It is not said that the troops were complimented by the presence

of the people, who, on holidays then as on holidays now, usually

appeared, having an air of self-respect, well-dressed, well-behaved,

with nothing moving among them more threatening than the baton of the

police as the sign of law and authority, but respecting that as the

symbol of their own law. What Tory writers and officials say warrants

the inference that the Patriots kept away. Dalrymple said that the

Convention was planet-stricken; "Sagittarius," a Tory scribbler, says

the Convention ran, and tells how they ran:--"The courage of the

faithful only consisted in blustering, for the morning that the troops

landed they broke up, and rushed out of town like a herd of scalded

hogs." If the Patriots generally were absent, it was from design. The

Fourteenth Regiment remained near the Town-House until the Twenty-Ninth

joined it, when the column marched to the Common. About four o'clock

these troops were joined by the Fifty-Ninth Regiment, and a train

of artillery with two field-pieces. This made a force of a thousand

fine-appearing and well-disciplined regulars.

Colonel Dalrymple ordered the Twenty-Ninth Regiment to encamp

immediately, which, as it had field-equipage, it was enabled to do, and

pitched its tents on the Common; but he had no cover for the Fourteenth

Regiment, and he now endeavored to obtain quarters for it. He was

directed to the Manufactory House, a large building owned by the

Province, in what is now Hamilton Place, near the Common, which was

hired by a zealous Patriot, who declined to let the troops occupy it;

whereupon he applied to the Selectmen for Faneuil Hall, promising that

the utmost care should be taken not to injure the property. "About

twilight," in the words of the "Gazette," "the Fourteenth Regiment

marched down to the Hall, where they stood under arms till near nine

o'clock, when the door, by some means or other, being opened, they took

up their lodgings there that night." The Colonel exultingly wrote,--"By

tolerable management I got possession of Faneuil Hall, the School of

Liberty, from the Sons thereof, without force, and thereby secured all

their arms": about four hundred had been recently placed there to be

cleaned.

Such was the day, so long looked forward to, of the landing of the

King's troops. The people were indignant, but were silent and preserved

their self-respect; but the object of the popular leaders had been

accomplished, so far as the reception of the military force was

concerned. A candid British observer, who was in Boston, saw the truth

and printed it in England:--"The Patriot leaders of the Opposition

were much more concerned at any mobs that happened than the Government

people. These last seem pleased with them, as countenancing their

representations,--the necessity of sending soldiers to keep them in

order." On this occasion, in the words of the "Gazette," "Not the least

attempt was made or contemplated to oppose the landing of the King's

troops or their encampment on the Common." There is no mention made of

even hisses or groans, as the colors that symbolized arbitrary power

were proudly borne up King Street. The peace and good order that marked

the day much chagrined the Loyalists, and fairly astonished "the

gentlemen of the military."

These gentlemen might have read in the next issues of the journals the

temper of the public mind, in the comments freely made on their mission

and on the events that were said to have occasioned their presence.

The pretext, the obnoxious proceedings of the eighteenth of March, was

characterized as the trifling hallooing of a harmless procession; the

mob of the tenth of June was more serious, but was soon over; but on

the all-important and vital point of allegiance, they might have seen

expressed, in the weighty words of the Council, infinite regret at the

reflection which that show of force implied on the loyalty of the people

to their sovereign, who had not in his wide-extended dominions any more

faithful subjects than in the town of Boston. And what really was the

offence of the Patriots? They had resolved, they had petitioned, they

had agreed not to import or to buy British goods. But they were not

law-breakers, for they could triumphantly challenge their opponents to

produce a single instance since the tenth of June of an interruption of

the public peace or of resistance to law; and they were not political

heretics, for the principles of colonial administration which they stood

on were such as their 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!"

THE HEALTH OF OUR GIRLS.

Among the lower animals, so far as the facts have been noticed, there

seems no great inequality, as to strength or endurance, between the

sexes. In migratory tribes, as of birds or buffaloes, the males are not

observed to slacken or shorten their journeys from any gallant

deference to female weakness, nor are the females found to perish

disproportionately through exhaustion. It is the English experience

that among coursing-dogs and race-horses there is no serious sexual

inequality. Aelian says that Semiramis did not exult when in the chase

she captured a lion, but was proud when she took a lioness, the dangers

of the feat being far greater. Hunters as willingly encounter the male

as the female of most savage beasts; and if an adventurous fowler,

plundering an eagle's nest, has his eyes assaulted by the parent-bird,

it is no matter whether the discourtesy proceeds from the gentleman or

the lady of the household.

Passing to the ranks of humanity, it is the general rule, that, wherever

the physical nature has a fair chance, the woman shows no extreme

deficiency of endurance or strength. Even the sentimental physiology

of Michelet is compelled to own that his elaborate theories of lovely

invalidism have no application to the peasant-women of France, that

is, to nineteen-twentieths of the population. Among human beings,

the disparities of race and training far outweigh those of sex. The

sedentary philosopher, turning from his demonstration of the hopeless

inferiority of woman, finds with dismay that his Irish or negro

handmaiden can lift a heavy coal-hod more easily than he. And while the

dream is vanishing of the superiority of savage races on every other

point, it still remains unquestionable that in every distinctive

attribute of physical womanhood the barbarian has the advantage.

The truth is, that in all countries female health and strength go with

peasant habits. In Italy, for instance, About says, that, of all useful

animals, the woman is the one that the Roman peasant employs with the

most profit. "She makes the bread and the cake of Turkish corn; she

spins, she weaves, she sews; she goes every day three miles for wood and

a mile for water; she carries on her head the load of a mule; she toils

from sunrise to sunset without resisting or even complaining. The

children, which she brings forth in great numbers, and which she nurses

herself, are a great resource; from the age of four years they can be

employed in guarding other animals."

Beside this may be placed the experience of Moffat, the African

missionary, who, seeing a party of native women engaged in their usual

labor of house-building, and just ready to put the roof on, suggested

that some of the men who stood by should lend a hand. It was received

with general laughter; but Mahuto, the queen, declared that the plan,

though hopeless of execution, was in itself a good one, and that men,

though excused from lighter labors, ought to take an equal share in the

severer,--adding, that she wished the missionaries would give their

husbands medicine and make them work.

The health of educated womanhood in the different European nations seems

to depend mainly upon the degree of conformity to these rustic habits

of air and exercise. In Italy, Spain, Portugal, the women of the upper

classes lead secluded and unhealthy lives, and hence their physical

condition is not superior to our own. In the Northern nations, women of

refinement do more to emulate the active habits of the peasantry,--only

substituting out-door relaxations for out-door toil,--and so they share

their health. This is especially the case in England, which accordingly

seems to furnish the representative types of vigorous womanhood.

"The nervous system of the female sex in England seems to be of a much

stronger mould than that of other nations," says Dr. Merei, a medical

practitioner of English and Continental experience. "They bear a degree

of irritation in their systems, without the issue of fits, which in

other races is not so easily tolerated." So Professor Tyndall, watching

female pedestrianism among the Alps, exults in his countrywomen:--"The

contrast in regard to energy between the maidens of the British Isles

and those of the Continent and of America is astonishing." When Catlin's

Indians first walked the streets of London, they reported with wonder

that they had seen many handsome squaws holding to the arms of men, "and

they did not look sick either";--a remark which no complimentary savage

was ever heard to make in any Cisatlantic metropolis.

There is undoubtedly an impression in this country that the English

vigor is bought at some sacrifice,--that it implies a nervous

organization less fine and artistic, features and limbs more rudely

moulded, and something more coarse and peasant-like in the whole average

texture. Making all due allowance for national vanity, it is yet easy to

see that superiority may be had more cheaply by lowering the plane of

attainment. The physique of a healthy day-laborer is a thing of inferior

mould to the physique of a healthy artist. Muscular power needs also

nervous power to bring out its finest quality. Lightness and grace are

not incompatible with vigor, but are its crowning illustration.

Apollo is above Hercules; Hebe and Diana are winged, not weighty. The

physiologist must never forget that Nature is aiming at a keener and

subtiler temperament in framing the American,--as beneath our drier

atmosphere the whole scale of sounds and hues and odors is tuned to a

higher key,--and that for us an equal state of health may yet produce

a higher type of humanity. To make up the arrears of past neglect,

therefore, is a matter of absolute necessity, if we wish this experiment

of national temperament to have any chance; since rude health, however

obtuse, will in the end overmatch disease, however finely strung.

But the fact must always be kept in mind that the whole problem

of female health is most closely intertwined with that of social

conditions. The Anglo-Saxon organization is being modified not only in

America, but also in England, with the changing habits of the people. In

the days of Henry VIII. it was "a wyve's occupation to winnow all manner

of cornes, to make malte, to wash and ironyng, to make hay, shere corne,

and in time of nede to help her husband fill the muchpayne, drive the

plough, load hay, corne, and such other, and go or ride to the market to

sell butter, cheese, egges, chekyns, capons, hens, pigs, geese, and all

manner of cornes." But now there is everywhere complaint of the growing

delicacy and fragility of the English female population, even in rural

regions; and the king of sanitary reformers, Edwin Chadwick, has lately

made this complaint the subject of a special report before the National

Association. He assumes, as a matter settled by medical authority, that

the proportion of mothers who can suckle their children is decidedly

diminishing among the upper and middle classes, that deaths from

childbirth are eight times as great among these classes as among the

peasantry, and that spinal distortion, hysteria, and painful disorders

are on the increase. Nine-tenths of the evil he attributes to the long

hours of school study, and to the neglect of physical exercises for

girls.

This shows that the symptoms of ill-health among women are not a matter

of climate only, but indicate a change in social conditions, producing

a change of personal habits. It is something which reaches all; for the

standard of health in the farm-houses is with us no higher than in the

cities. It is something which, unless removed, stands as a bar to any

substantial progress in civilization. It is a mere mockery for the

millionnaire to create galleries of Art, bringing from Italy a Venus on

canvas or a stone Diana, if meanwhile a lovelier bloom than ever artist

painted is fading from his own child's cheek, and a firmer vigor than

that of marble is vanishing from her enfeebled arms. What use to found

colleges for girls whom even the high-school breaks down, or to induct

them into new industrial pursuits when they have not strength to stand

behind a counter? How appeal to any woman to enlarge her thoughts beyond

the mere drudgery of the household, when she "dies daily" beneath the

exhaustion of even that?

And the perplexity lies beyond the disease, in the perils involved even

in the remedy. No person can be long conversant with physical training,

without learning to shrink from the responsibility of the health of

girls. The panacea for boyish health is commonly simple, even for

delicate cases. Removal from books, if necessary, and the substitution

of farm-life,--with good food, pure air, dogs, horses, oxen, hens,

rabbits,--and fresh or salt water within walking distance. Secure these

conditions, and then let him alone; he will not hurt himself. Nor

will, during mere childhood, his little sister experience anything but

benefit, under the same circumstances. But at the epoch of womanhood,

precisely when the constitution should be acquiring robust strength, her

perils begin; she then needs not merely to be allured to exertion, but

to be protected against over-exertion; experience shows that she cannot

be turned loose, cannot be safely left with boyish freedom to take her

fill of running, rowing, riding, swimming, skating,--because life-long

injury may be the penalty of a single excess. This necessity for caution

cannot be the normal condition, for such caution cannot be exerted for

the female peasant or savage, but it seems the necessary condition for

American young women. It is a fact not to be ignored, that some of the

strongest and most athletic girls among us have lost their health and

become invalids for years, simply by being allowed to live the robust,

careless, indiscreet life on which boys thrive so wonderfully. It is

fatal, if they do too little, and disastrous, if they do too much;

and between these two opposing perils the process of steering is so

difficult that the majority of parents end in letting go the helm and

leaving the fragile vessel to steer itself.

Everything that follows in these pages must therefore be construed in

the light of this admitted difficulty. The health of boys is a matter

not hard to treat, on purely physiological grounds; but in dealing with

that of girls caution is necessary. Yet, after all, the perplexities can

only obscure the details of the prescription, while the main substance

is unquestionable. Nowhere in the universe, save in improved habits, can

we ever find health for our girls. Special delicacy in the conditions of

the problem only implies more sedulous care in the solution. The great

laws of exercise, of respiration, of digestion are essentially the same

for all human beings; and greater sensitiveness in the patient should

not relax, but only stimulate, our efforts after cure. And the

unquestionable fact that there are among us, after the worst is said,

large numbers of robust and healthy women, should keep up our courage

until we can apply their standard to the whole sex.

In presence of an evil so great, it is inevitable that there should be

some fantastic theories of cure. But extremes are quite pardonable,

where it is so important to explore all the sources of danger. Special

ills should have special assailants, at whatever risk of exaggeration.

As water-cures and vegetarian boarding-houses are the necessary defence

of humanity against dirt and over-eating, so is the most ungainly

Bloomer that ever drifted on bare poles across the continent a

providential protest against the fashion-plates. It is probable, that,

on the whole, there is a gradual amelioration in female costume. These

hooded water-proof cloaks, equalizing all womankind,--these thick soles

and heavy heels, proclaiming themselves with such masculine emphasis

on the pavement,--these priceless india-rubber boots, emancipating all

juvenile femineity from the terrors of mud and snow,--all these indicate

an approaching era of good sense; for they are the requisite machinery

of air, exercise, and health, so far as they go.

The weight of skirts and the constraints of corsets are still properly

made the theme of indignant declamation. Yet let us be just. It is

impossible to make costume the prime culprit, when we recall what robust

generations have been reared beneath the same formidable panoply. For

instance, it seems as if no woman could habitually walk uninjured with a

weight of twelve pounds of skirts suspended at her hips,--Dr. Coale is

responsible for the statistics,--and as if salvation must therefore lie

in shoulder-straps. Yet the practice cannot be sheer suicide, when the

Dutch peasant-girl plods bloomingly through her daily duties beneath a

dozen successive involucres of flannel. So in regard to tight lacing,

no one can doubt its ill effects, since even a man's loose garments

are known to diminish by one-fourth his capacity for respiration. Yet

inspect in the shop-windows (where the facts of female costume are

obtruded too pertinaciously for the public to remain in ignorance)

the light and flexible corsets of these days, and then contemplate at

Pilgrim Hall in Plymouth the stout buckram stays that once incased the

stouter heart of Alice Bradford. Those, again, were to those of a still

earlier epoch as leather to chain-armor. The Countess of Buchan was

confined in an iron cage for life for assisting to crown Robert the

Bruce, but her only loss by the incarceration was that her iron cage

ceased to be portable.

Passing from costume, it must be noticed that there are many physical

evils which the American woman shares with the other sex, but which bear

with far greater severity on her finer organization. There is improper

food, for instance. The fried or salted meat, the heavy bread, the

perennial pork, the disastrous mince-pies of our farmers' houses are

sometimes pardoned by Nature to the men of the family, in consideration

of twelve or more hours of out-door labor. For the more sedentary and

delicate daughter there is no such atonement, and she vibrates between

dyspepsia and starvation. The only locality in America where I have ever

found the farming population living habitually on wholesome diet is the

Quaker region in Eastern Pennsylvania, and I have never seen anywhere

else such a healthy race of women. Yet here, again, it is not safe to

be hasty, or to lay the whole responsibility upon the kitchen, when we

recall the astounding diet on which healthy Englishwomen subsisted two

centuries ago. Consider, for instance, the housekeeping of the Duke of

Northumberland. "My lord and lady have for breakfast, at seven o'clock,

a quart of beer, as much wine, two pieces of salt fish, six red herring,

four white ones, and a dish of sprats." Digestive resources which

could, entertain this bill of fare might safely be trusted to travel in

America.

The educational excesses of our schools, also, though shared by both

sexes, tell much more formidably upon girls, in proportion as they are

keener students, more submissive pupils, and are given to studying their

lessons at recess-time, instead of shouting and racing in the open

air. They are also easily coerced into devoting Wednesday and Saturday

afternoons to the added atrocity of music-lessons, and in general, but

for the recent blessed innovation of skating, would undoubtedly submit

to having every atom of air and exercise eliminated from their lives. It

is rare to find an American mother who habitually ranks physical vigor

first, in rearing her daughters, and intellectual culture only second;

indeed, they are commonly satisfied with a merely negative condition of

health. The girl is considered to be well, if she is not too ill to go

to school; and she therefore lives from hand to mouth, as respects her

constitution, and lays up nothing for emergencies. From this negative

condition proceeds her inability to endure accidents which to an active

boy would be trivial. Who ever hears of a boy's incurring a lame knee

for a year by slipping on the ice, or spinal disease for a lifetime by

a fall from a sled? And if a girl has not enough of surplus vitality to

overcome such trifles as these, how is she fitted to meet the coming

fatigues of wife and mother?

These are important, if superficial, suggestions; but there are other

considerations which go deeper. I take the special provocatives of

disease among American women to be in great part social. The one marked

step achieved thus far by our civilization appears to be the abolition

of the peasant class, among the native-born, and the elevation of the

mass of women to the social zone of music-lessons and silk gowns. This

implies the disappearance of field-labor for women, and, unfortunately,

of that rustic health also which in other countries is a standing

exemplar for all classes. Wherever the majority of women work in the

fields, the privileged minority are constantly reminded that they also

hold their health by the tenure of some substituted activity. With

us, all women have been relieved from out-door labor,--and are being

sacrificed in the process, until they learn to supply its place. Except

the graceful and vanishing pursuit of hop-picking, there is in New

England no agricultural labor in which women can be said to be

habitually engaged. Most persons never saw an American woman making hay,

unless in the highly imaginative cantata of "The Hay-Makers"; and Dolly

the Dairy-Maid is becoming to our children as purely ideal a being as

Cinderella. We thus lose not only the immediate effect, but the indirect

example, of these out-door toils.

This influence of the social transition bears upon all women: there

is another which especially touches wives and mothers. In European

countries, the aim at anything like gentility implies keeping one or

more domestics to perform house-hold labors; but in our Free States

every family aims at gentility, while not one in five keeps a domestic.

The aim is not a foolish one, though follies may accompany it,--for the

average ambition of our people includes a certain amount of refined

cultivation;--it is only that the process is exhausting. Every

woman must have a best-parlor with hair-cloth furniture and a

photograph--book; she must have a piano, or some cheaper substitute;

her little girls must have embroidered skirts and much mathematical

knowledge; her husband must have two or even three hot meals every day

of his life; and yet her house must be in perfect order early in the

afternoon, and she prepared to go out and pay calls, with a black silk

dress and a card-case. In the evening she will go to a concert or a

lecture, and then, at the end of all, she will very possibly sit up

after midnight with her sewing-machine, doing extra shop-work to pay for

little Ella's music-lessons. All this every "capable" New-England woman

will do, or die. She does it, and dies; and then we are astonished

that her vital energy gives out sooner than that of an Irishwoman in a

shanty, with no ambition on earth but to supply her young Patricks with

adequate potatoes.

Now it is useless to attempt to set back the great social flood. The

New-England housekeeper will never be killed by idleness, at any rate;

and if she is exposed to the opposite danger, we must fit her for it,

that is all. There is reason to be hopeful; the human race as a whole is

tending upward, even physically, and if we cannot make our girls healthy

quite yet, we shall learn to do it by-and-by. Meanwhile we must hold

hard to the conviction, that not merely decent health, but even a high

physical training, is a thing thoroughly practicable for both sexes. If

a young girl can tire out her partner in the dance, if a delicate wife

can carry her baby twice as long as her athletic husband, (for certainly

there is nothing in the gymnasium more amazing than the mother's left

arm,) then it is evident that the female frame contains muscular power,

or its equivalent, though it may take music or maternity to bring it

out. But other inducements have proved sufficient, and the results do

not admit of question. The Oriental _bayadères_, for instance, are

trained from childhood as gymnasts: they carry heavy jars on their

heads, to improve strength, gait, and figure; they fly kites, to acquire

"statuesque attitudes and graceful surprises"; they must learn to lay

the back of the hand flat against the wrist, to partially bend the

arm in both directions at the elbow, and, inclining the whole person

backward from the waist, to sweep the floor with the hair. So, among

ourselves, the great athletic resources of the female frame are

vindicated by every equestrian goddess of the circus, every pet of the

ballet. Those airy nymphs have been educated for their vocation by an

amount of physical fatigue which their dandy admirers may well prefer to

contemplate through the safe remoteness of an opera-glass.

Dr. Gardner, of New York, has lately contributed very important

professional observations upon this class of his patients; he describes

their physique as infinitely superior to that of ordinary women,

wonderfully adapting them not only to the extraordinary, but to the

common perils of their sex, "with that happy union of power and

pliability most to be desired." "Their occupation demands in its daily

study and subsequent practice an amount of long-continued muscular

energy of the severest character, little recognized or understood by

the community"; and his description of their habitual immunity in the

ordeals of womanhood reminds one of the descriptions of savage tribes.

But it is really a singular retribution for our prolonged offences

against the body, when our saints are thus compelled to take their

models from the reputed sinners,--prize-fighters being propounded as

missionaries for the men, and opera-dancers for the women.

Are we literally to infer, then, that dancing must be the primary

prescription? It would not be a bad one. It was an invaluable hint of

Hippocrates, that the second-best remedy is better than the best, if the

patient likes it best. Beyond all other merits of the remedy in question

is this crowning advantage, that the patient likes it. Has any form of

exercise ever yet been invented which a young girl would not leave for

dancing?

"Women, it is well known," says Jean Paul, "cannot run, but only dance,

and every one could more easily reach a given point by dancing than by

walking." It is practised in this country under immense disadvantages:

first, because of late hours and heated rooms; and secondly, because

some of the current dances seem equally questionable to the mamma and

the physiologist. But it is doubtful whether any possible gymnastic

arrangement for a high-school would be on the whole so provocative

of the wholesome exercise as a special hall for dancing, thoroughly

ventilated, and provided with piano and spring-floor. The spontaneous

festivals of every recess-time would then rival those German

public-rooms, where it is said you may see a whole company waltzing like

teetotums, with the windows wide open, at four o'clock in the afternoon.

Skating is dancing in another form; both aim at flying, and skating

comes nearest to success. The triumph of this art has been so

astonishing, in the universality of its introduction among our girls

within the short space of four winters, that it is hardly necessary to

speak of it, except to deduce the hope that other out-door enjoyments,

equally within the reach of the girls, may be as easily popularized.

For any form of locomotion less winged than skating and dancing the feet

of American girls have hitherto seemed somehow unfitted by Nature. There

is every abstract reason why they should love walking, on this side of

the Atlantic: there is plenty of room for it, the continent is large;

the exercise, moreover, brightens the eye and purifies the complexion,

--so the physiologists declare: so that an English chemist classifies

red cheeks as being merely oxygen in another form, and advises young

ladies who wish for a pair to seek them where the roses get them,

out-of-doors,--upon which an impertinent damsel writes to ask "Punch"

if they might not as well carry the imitation of the roses a little

farther, and remain in their beds all the time? But it is a lamentable

fact, that walking, for the mere love of it, is a rare habit among our

young women, and rarer probably in the country than in the city; it is

uncommon to hear of one who walks habitually as much as two miles a day.

There are, of course, many exceptional instances: I know maidens who

love steep paths and mountain rains, like Wordsworth's Louisa, and I

have even heard of eight young ladies who walked from Andover to Boston,

twenty-three miles, in six hours, and of two who did forty-five miles in

two days. Moreover, with our impulsive temperaments, a special object

will always operate as a strong allurement. A confectioner's shop, for

instance. A camp somewhere in the suburbs, with dress-parades, and

available lieutenants. A new article of dress: a real ermine cape may be

counted as good for three miles a day, for the season. A dearest friend

within pedestrian distance: so that it would seem well to plant a circle

of delightful families just in the outskirts of every town, merely to

serve as magnets. Indeed, so desperate has the emergency become, that

one might take even ladies' hoops to be a secret device of Nature to

secure more exercise for the occupants by compelling them thus to make

the circuit of each other, as the two fat noblemen at the French court

vindicated themselves from the charge of indolence by declaring that

each promenaded twice round his friend every morning.

In view of this distaste for pedestrian exercise, it seems strange

that the present revival of athletic exercises has not yet reached to

horsemanship, the traditional type of all noble training, _chevalerie_,

chivalry. Certainly it is not for the want of horse-flesh, for never

perhaps was so much of that costly commodity owned in this community;

yet in New England you shall find private individuals who keep a

half-dozen horses each, and livery-stables possessing fifty, and never a

proper saddle-horse among them. In some countries, riding does half the

work of physical training, for both sexes; Sir Walter Scott, when at

Abbotsford, never omitted his daily ride, and took his little daughter

with him, from the time she could sit on horseback; but what New-England

man, in purchasing a steed, selects with a view to a side-saddle? This

seems a sad result of the wheel-maker's trade, and one grudges St.

Willegis the wheel on his coat-of-arms, if it has thus served to tame

down freeborn men and women to the slouching and indolent practice

of driving,--a practice in which the human figure appears at such

disadvantage, that one can hardly wonder at Horace Walpole's coachman,

who had laid up a small fortune by driving the maids-of-honor, and

left it all to his son upon condition that he never should take a

maid-of-honor for his wife.

An exercise to which girls take almost as naturally as to dancing is

that of rowing, an accomplishment thoroughly feminine, learned with

great facility, and on the whole safer than most other sports. Yet until

within a few years no one thought of it in connection with women, unless

with semi-mythical beings, like Ellen Douglas or Grace Darling. Even now

it is chiefly a city accomplishment, and you rarely find at rural or

sea-side places a village damsel who has ever handled an oar. But once

having acquired the art, girls will readily fatigue themselves with its

practice, unsolicited, careless of tan and freckles. At Dove Harbor it

is far easier at any time to induce the young ladies to row for two

hours than to walk in the beautiful wood-paths for fifteen minutes;--the

walking tires them. No matter; for a special exercise the rowing is the

most valuable of the two, and furnishes just what the dancing-school

omits. Unfortunately, the element of water is not quite a universal

possession, and no one can train Naiads on dry land.

One of the merits of boating is that it suggests indirectly the

attendant accomplishment of swimming, and this is some thing of

such priceless importance that no trouble can be too great for its

acquisition. Parents are uneasy until their children are vaccinated, and

yet leave them to incur a risk as great and almost as easily averted.

The barbarian mother, who, lowering her baby into the water by her

girdle, teaches it to swim ere it can walk, is before us in this duty.

Swimming, moreover, is not one of those arts in which a little learning

is a dangerous thing; on the contrary, a little may be as useful in

an emergency as a great deal, if it gives those few moments of

self-possession amid danger which will commonly keep a person from

drowning until assistance comes. Women are naturally as well fitted for

swimming as men, since specific buoyancy is here more than a match

for strength; but effort is often needed to secure for them those

opportunities of instruction and practice which the unrestrained

wanderings of boys secure for them so easily. For this purpose,

swimming-schools for ladies are now established in many places, at home

and abroad; and the newspapers have lately chronicled a swimming-match

at a girls' school in Berlin, where thirty-three competitors were

entered for the prize,--and another among titled ladies in Paris, where

each fashionable swimmer was allowed the use of the left hand only, the

right hand sustaining an open parasol. Our own waters have, it may be,

exhibited spectacles as graceful, though less known to fame. Never may I

forget the bevy of bright maidens who under my pilotage buffeted on many

a summer's day the surges of Cape Ann, learning a wholly new delight in

trusting the buoyancy of the kind old ocean and the vigor of their

own fair arms. Ah, my pupils, some of you have since been a prince's

partners in the ball-room; but in those days, among the dancing waves,

it was King Neptune who placed on you his crown.

Other out-door habits depend upon the personal tastes of the individual,

in certain directions, and are best cultivated by educating these. If a

young girl is born and bred with a love of any branch of natural history

or of horticulture, happy is she; for the mere unconscious interest of

the pursuit is an added lease of life to her. It is the same with all

branches of Art whose pursuit leads into the open air. Rosa Bonheur,

with her wanderings among mountains and pastures, alternating with the

vigorous work of the studio, needed no other appliances for health. The

same advantages come to many, in spite of delinquent mothers, in

the bracing habits of household labor, at least where mechanical

improvements have not rendered it too easy. Improved cooking-stoves and

Mrs. Cornelius have made the culinary art such a path of roses that

it is hardly now included in early training, but deferred till after

matrimony. Yet bread-making in well-ventilated kitchens and sweeping in

open-windowed rooms are calisthenics so bracing that one grudges them to

the Irish maidens, whose round and comely arms betray so much less need

of their tonic influence than the shrunken muscles exhibited so freely

by our short-sleeved belles.

Perhaps even well-developed arms are not so essential to female beauty

as erectness of figure, a trait on which our low school-desks have made

sad havoc. The only sure panacea for round shoulders in boys appears to

be the military drill, and Miss Mitford records that in her youth it was

the custom in girls' schools to apply the same remedy. Dr. Lewis relies

greatly on the carrying of moderate weights upon a padded wooden cap

which he has devised for this purpose; and certainly the straightest

female figure with which I am acquainted--aged seventy-four--is said to

have been formed by the youthful habit of pacing the floor for half an

hour dally, with a book upon the head, under rigid maternal discipline.

Another traditional method is to insist that the damsel shall sit erect,

without leaning against the chair, for a certain number of hours daily;

and Sir Walter Scott says that his mother, in her eightieth year, took

as much care to avoid giving any support to her back as if she had been

still under the stern eye of Mrs. Ogilvie, her early teacher. Such

simple methods may not be enough to check diseased curvatures or

inequalities when already formed: these are best met by Ling's system

of medical gymnastics, or "movement-cure," as applied by Dr. Lewis, Dr.

Taylor, and others.

The ordinary gymnastic apparatus has also been employed extensively by

women, and that very successfully, wherever the exercises have been

systematically organized, with agreeable classes and competent teachers.

If the gymnasium often fails to interest girls as much as boys, it is

probably from deficiency in these respects,--and also because the female

pupils, beginning on a lower plane of strength, do not command so great

a variety of exercises, and so tire of the affair more readily. But

hundreds, if not thousands, of American women have practised in these

institutions during the last ten years,--single establishments in large

cities having sometimes several hundred pupils,--and many have attained

a high degree of skill in climbing, vaulting, swinging, and the like;

nor can I find that any undue proportion of accidents has occurred.

Wherever Dr. Lewis's methods have been introduced, important advantages

have followed. He has invented an astonishing variety of games and

well-studied movements,--with the lightest and cheapest apparatus,

balls, bags, rings, wands, wooden dumb-bells, small clubs, and other

instrumentalities,--which are all gracefully and effectually used by his

classes, to the sound of music, and in a way to spare the weakest when

lightly administered, or to fatigue the strongest when applied in force.

Being adapted for united use by both sexes, they make more thorough

appeal to the social element than the ordinary gymnastics; and evening

classes, to meet several evenings in a week, have proved exceedingly

popular in some of our towns. These exercises do not require fixed

apparatus or a special hall. For this and other reasons they are

peculiarly adapted for use in schools, and it would be well if they

could be regularly taught in our normal institutions. Dr. Lewis himself

is now training regular teachers to carry on the same good work, and his

movement is undoubtedly the most important single step yet taken for the

physical education of American women.

There is withal a variety of agreeable minor exercises, dating back

farther than gymnastic professors, which must not be omitted. Archery,

still in fashion in England, has never fairly taken root among us, and

seems almost hopeless: the clubs formed for its promotion die out almost

as speedily as cricket-clubs, and leave no trace behind; though this may

not always be. Bowling and billiards are, however, practised by lady

amateurs, just so far as they find opportunity, which is not very far;

desirable public or private facilities being obtainable by few only,

except at the summer watering-places. Battledoor-and-shuttlecock seems

likely to come again into favor, and that under eminent auspices:

Dr. Windship holding it in high esteem, as occupying the mind while

employing every part of the body, harmonizing the muscular system,

giving quickness to eye and hand, and improving the balancing power.

The English, who systematize all amusements so much more than we, have

developed this simple entertainment into several different games,

arduous and complicated as their games of ball. The mere multiplication

of the missiles also lends an additional stimulus, and the statistics

of success in this way appear almost fabulous. A zealous English

battledoorean informs me that the highest scores yet recorded in the

game are as follows: five thousand strokes for a single shuttlecock,

five hundred when employing two, one hundred and fifty with three, and

fifty-two when four airy messengers are kept flying simultaneously.

It may seem trivial to urge upon rational beings the use of a

shuttlecock as a duty; but this is surely better than that one's health

should become a thing as perishable, and fly away as easily. There is

no danger that our educational systems will soon grow too careless of

intellect and too careful of health. Reforms, whether in physiology or

in smaller things, move slowly, when prejudice or habit bars the way.

Paris is the head-quarters of medical science; yet in Paris, to this

day, the poor babies in the great hospital of La Maternité are so

tortured in tight swathings that not a limb can move. Progress is not

in proportion to the amount of scientific knowledge on deposit in any

country, but to the extent of its diffusion. No nation in the world

grapples with its own evils so promptly as ours. It is but a few years

since there was a general croaking about the physical deterioration of

young men in our cities,--and now already the cities and the colleges

are beginning to lead the rural districts in this respect. The guaranty

of reform in American female health is to be found in the growing

popular conviction that reform is needed. The community is tired of

the reproaches of foreigners, and of the more serious evils of homes

desolated by disease, and lives turned to tragedies. Morbid anatomy has

long enough served as a type of feminine loveliness; our polite society

has long enough been a series of soirées of incurables. Health is coming

into fashion. A mercantile parent lately told me that already in his

town, if a girl could vault a five-barred gate, her prospects for a

husband were considered to be improved ten per cent.; and every one

knows that there is no metre of public sentiment so infallible as the

stock-market. Now that the country is becoming safe, we must again turn

our attention to the health of our girls. Unless they are healthy,

the country is not safe. No where can their physical condition be so

important as in a republic. The utmost attention was paid to the bodily

training of Victoria, because she was to be a queen and the mother of

kings. By the theory of our government, however imperfectly applied as

yet, this is the precise position of every American girl. Voltaire

said that the fate of nations had often depended on the gout of a

prime-minister; and the fate of our institutions may hang on the precise

temperament which our next President shall have inherited from his

mother.

* * * * *

SONNET.

The starry flower, the flower-like stars that fade

And brighten with the daylight and the dark,

The bluet in the green I faintly mark,

And glimmering crags with laurel overlaid,

Even to the Lord of light, the Lamp of shade,

Shine one to me,--the least still glorious made

As crownèd moon or heaven's great hierarch.

And, so, dim grassy flower and night-lit spark

Still move me on and upward for the True;

Seeking, through change, growth, death, in new and old,

The full in few, the statelier in the less,

With patient pain; always remembering this,--

His hand, who touched the sod with showers of gold,

Stippled Orion on the midnight blue.

THE HORRORS OF SAN DOMINGO.