"There has been an offer from Gage to send the poor of Boston to Salem, by water, but not complied with on our part; they returned for answer, they would receive them upon the lines. Dr. Tufts saw a letter from Deacon Newall, in which he mentions the death of John Cotton; he says it is very sickly in town. Every fishing vessel is now obliged to enter and clear out, as though she was going a foreign voyage. No inhabitant is suffered to partake, but obliged to wait till the army is supplied, and then, if one [fish] remains, they are allowed to purchase it. An order has been given out in town that no person shall be seen to wipe his face with a white handkerchief. The reason I hear is, that it is a signal of mutiny. General Burgoyne lives in Mr. Sam Quincy's house. A lady, who lived opposite, says she saw raw meat cut and hacked upon her mahogany tables, and her superb damask curtains and cushions exposed to the rain, as if they were of no value. . . ." Up to this time, Mrs. Adams had only the sorrows of her neighbors to chronicle, but now her own turn was come. A violent epidemic of dysentery broke out in the surrounding country, and "calm, happy Braintree" was calm no longer. One after another of the family sickened; one of the servants first, Isaac, ("there was no resting-place in the house, for his terrible groans!") Mrs. Adams herself was the next, and she was sorely tempted to send for her husband, who was then but a few days on his journey back to Philadelphia. "I suffered greatly between my inclination to have you return, and my fear of sending lest you should be a partaker of the common calamity." . . . "Our little Tommy was the next, and he lies very ill now. . . . Our house is a hospital in every part; and what with my own weakness and distress of mind for my family, I have been unhappy enough. And such is the distress of the neighborhood that I can scarcely find a well person to assist in looking after the sick. . . . So sickly and so mortal a time the oldest man does not remember. . . . As to politics, I know nothing about them. The distresses of my own family are so great that I have not thought of them. . . ." One of the maids died; the others recovered, though Tommy, who had been a "hearty, hale, corn-fed boy," was now "entirely stripped of the hardy, robust countenance, as well as of all the flesh he had, save what remains for to keep his bones together." In October, Abigail's mother, after visiting a soldier home from the army on sick leave, was stricken by the pestilence and died. This was a heavy blow, and the daughter's heart cried out to her absent mate. "Have pity on me, O thou my beloved, for the hand of God presseth me sore."