That, should your Excellency graciously order six months advance upon their pensions to be paid previous to their sailing, it will be very thankfully received as indeed their circumstances are such as they cannot go with reasonable Comfort and Decency without it. As your Memorialists sufferings have been very long and great--They humbly ask as many Favours and Indulgences as to your Excellency shall appear anyways reasonable and fit, and as in duty bound they will ever pray etc. HESTER DANFORTH ANNE DUTTON NEW YORK, _June 2, 1783_.'" "I always think that an interesting letter," said Mrs. Airton, "because both of those ladies who signed it were brought up in the greatest luxury; their father had one of the large estates on the Hudson and their mother was of English birth and an heiress; but the family saved not a single shred of their fortune and it is rather touching to read behind the lines of this letter and to see that both these young women, for they were under thirty-five, had for some time been suffering for the necessities of life." "'The fortune of war,'" commented Priscilla, in the very words that she had used on her first visit to Eunice. "I hope," added Amy, "that they found life comfortable after they came here." "Ah," said Mrs. Airton, shaking her head, "at first life here could hardly be called comfortable. Imagine twenty-five hundred people crowded into this little town, which had not rooms for one tenth the number. Often a whole family had to content itself with one room, and delicately reared women and children had to spend at least a part of that first winter in tents. Several hundred, it is said, were herded together in the church. Of course, after a few months they began to distribute themselves through the country. Sometimes they had great trouble in taking possession of the land granted them, because it was already in the possession of the New Englanders who had settled on the farms of the Acadians twenty years before. Usually these pre-Loyalist settlers had a rightful title to the land they claimed; then the refugees had to apply for other lands. Many of these refugees were professional men or merchants from New York City, and they found it hard in middle life to become farmers; but, as you say, my dear, it was the fortune of war, and in time they adapted themselves to the new conditions. In the course of a few years some went back to New York, others sailed over to St. John, where, from the beginning, city life prevailed, and those who stayed here in Nova Scotia seemed to be contented with their lot; although I for one feel very bitter when I think of all that my family in its various branches lost. I feel it the more because I'm able to do so little for my children, and they are reaching an age when a little money would mean so much."