“Alas, venerable lady!” said Governor Hancock, lending her his support with all the reverence that a courtier would have shown to a queen. “Your life has been prolonged until the world has changed around you. You have treasured up all that time has rendered worthless--the principles, feelings, manners, modes of being and acting, which another generation has flung aside--and you are a symbol of the past. And I, and these around me--we represent a new race of men--living no longer in the past, scarcely in the present--but projecting our lives forward into the future. Ceasing to model ourselves on ancestral superstitions, it is our faith and principle to press onward, onward! Yet,” continued he, turning to his attendants, “let us reverence, for the last time, the stately and gorgeous prejudices of the tottering Past!” While the republican governor spoke he had continued to support the helpless form of Esther Dudley; her weight grew heavier against his arm; but at last, with a sudden effort to free herself, the ancient woman sank down beside one of the pillars of the portal. The key of the Province House fell from her grasp, and clanked against the stone. “I have been faithful unto death,” murmured she. “God save the king!” “She hath done her office!” said Hancock solemnly. “We will follow her reverently to the tomb of her ancestors; and then, my fellow-citizens, onward, onward! We are no longer children of the Past!” BETTY’S RIDE: A TALE OF THE REVOLUTION[D] By HENRY S. CANBY The story of a brave little Quaker girl’s perilous ride. How she saved the lives of many hard-pressed patriots, and won praise from the lips of General Washington, himself. The sun was just rising and showering his first rays on the gambrel roof and solid stone walls of a house surrounded by a magnificent grove of walnuts, and overlooking one of the beautiful valleys so common in southeastern Pennsylvania. Close by the house, and shaded by the same great trees, stood a low building of the most severe type, whose time-stained bricks and timbers green with moss told its age without the aid of the half-obliterated inscription over the door, which read, “Built A. D. 1720.” One familiar with the country would have pronounced it without hesitation a Quaker meeting-house, dating back almost to the time of William Penn. When Ezra Dale had become the leader of the little band of Quakers which gathered here every First Day, he had built the house under the walnut trees, and had taken his wife Ann and his little daughter Betty to live there. That was in 1770, seven years earlier, and before war had wrought sorrow and desolation throughout the country. The sun rose higher, and just as his beams touched the broad stone step in front of the house, the door opened, and Ann Dale, a sweet-faced woman in the plain Quaker garb, came out, followed by Betty, a little blue-eyed Quakeress of twelve years, with a gleam of spirit in her face which ill became her plain dress.