Richards Laura Elizabeth Howe - Abigail Adams and Her Times стр 26.

Great was the consternation. Howe summoned his officers, and prepared for a counter-attack; but Dame Nature, apparently in league with the patriots, responded with a furious storm which, lasting several days, made the action from Castle Island which he had planned impossible. During these days of storm, Washington was strengthening his defenses. Howe looked, and realized that the game was up. Others realized it too: the selectmen of Boston quietly intimated to him that if he left the town uninjured, his troops would be suffered to embark undisturbed. Washington gave no sign; waited, his powder dry, his matches burning. Nor did Howe answer the citizens in words; no words were needed for what he had to do. By daybreak on March 17th, the troops began to embark; by nine o'clock the last boat had put off. Boston was evacuated, and Washington and his Continentals entered the city.

"The actors in the scene have vanished into deeper obscurity than even that wild Indian band who scattered the cargoes of the tea ships on the waves, and gained a place in history, yet left no names. But superstition, among other legends of this mansion, (the Province House) repeats the wondrous tale, that on the anniversary night of Britain's discomfiture the ghosts of the ancient governors of Massachusetts still glide through the portal of the Province House. And, last of all, comes a figure shrouded in a military cloak, tossing his clenched hands into the air, and stamping his ironshod boots upon the broad freestone steps, with a semblance of feverish despair, but without the sound of a foot-tramp."

CHAPTER VII IN HAPPY BRAINTREE

We know that Mrs. Adams spent some part of each day in writing letters; but we have to stop and think about the other things she did, some of them were so different from the things women do today. Take the spinning and weaving! A spinning wheel, for us, is a pretty, graceful article of furniture, very useful for tableaux vivants and the like; in the Adams household it was as constantly and inevitably used as our own sewing-machine. So was the loom, which is banished altogether from New England homes, though in some parts of the South it is still in use. Mrs. Adams and her maids, Susie and Patty (poor Patty, who died that summer of 1775!), not only made, but spun and wove, every article of clothing, every sheet, blanket, table-cloth, that the house afforded. The wool-wheel is a large clumsy affair, very different from the elegant little flax-wheel. You may still find it in some New England households. Some years ago, driving along a remote road, I came to a little brown house, so old and moss-covered that it seemed almost a part of the wood that

surrounded it. I knocked, and hearing a cheery "Come in!" entered to find a neat kitchen, half filled by an enormous wheel, in front of which a little brownie of a woman was stepping back and forth, diligently spinning yarn. It was a pretty sight.

Thinking of this, and trying, as I am constantly doing, to link the new time to the old, I find myself calling up another picture, a scene on Boston Common in the year 1749, when a society, formed for promoting industry and frugality, publicly celebrated its fourth anniversary. "In the afternoon about three hundred young female spinsters, decently dressed, appeared on the Common at their spinning wheels. The wheels were placed regularly in rows, and a female was seated at each wheel. The weavers also appeared, cleanly dressed, in garments of their own weaving. One of them working at a loom on a stage was carried on men's shoulders, attended with music. An immense number of spectators were present."

I wonder if Mrs. Adams and her maidens made any "Bounty Coats." When Washington gathered his army in May, 1775, there were no overcoats for the men. The Provincial Congress "made a demand on the people for thirteen thousand warm coats to be ready for the soldiers by cold weather." There were no factories then, remember: no steam-power, no contractors, no anything except the women and their wheels. All over the country, the big wool-wheels began to fly, the shuttles sped back and forth through the sounding looms. Every town, every village, every lonely farmhouse, would do its part; long before the appointed time, the coats were ready. Inside each coat was sewed the name of town and maker. Every soldier, volunteering for eight months' service, was given one of these coats as a bounty. We are told that "so highly were these 'Bounty Coats' prized, that the heirs of soldiers who were killed at Bunker Hill before receiving their coats were given a sum of money instead. The list of names of soldiers who then enlisted is known to this day as the 'Coat Roll,' and the names of the women who made the coats might form another roll of honor."