Good Mother Nixon could get but little work from her Joe on the following morning. And though, in her peaceful Quaker way, she bade him beware of too much glorying in all the strife and warfare that seemed afoot, I rather suspect that even her placid face flushed with quiet enthusiasm as she besought her boy to remember that right was always right, and that it was nobler and manlier to boldly face whatever might betide than to be as were some men in their Quaker town who, so she said, “loved too much their money and their ease, and did but make conscience a convenience, instead of being sincerely and religiously scrupulous of bearing arms.” All of which meant that there were some craven folk in that day of manly protest against tyranny who, to save themselves from annoyance, pretended to be Quakers and “non-combatants,” when they were only skulking cowards. And all such every honest Quaker utterly detested. But young Joe Nixon, too full of the excitement of the moment, paid but little regard to his good mother’s words, inasmuch as they did not apply to his case; and, hot and panting, fearful lest he should miss something new, dashed up to the State House and slipped in beside his friend the doorkeeper. The Congress was already in session. Mr. Jefferson’s paper called the “Declaration respecting Independence” had been again taken up for consideration, and was being soberly debated, paragraph by paragraph. Frequent repetitions had made Joe familiar with some of the phrases in this remarkable paper. Even his young heart beat high as he heard some of those ringing sentences--about all men being created equal and being “endowed with the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”; how that “whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it”; that “the history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations,” that “a prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant is unfit to be the ruler of a free people”; that “we must, therefore, hold the British people, as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends”; that “we, the representatives of the United States of America in general Congress assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name and by the authority of the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish and declare that these united colonies are and of right ought to be free and independent States”; and, lastly, that “for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.”