There is a great scarcity of sugar and coffee, articles which the female part of the State is very loath to give up, especially whilst they consider the scarcity occasioned by the merchants having secreted a large quantity. There had been much rout and noise in the town for several weeks. Some stores had been opened by a number of people, and the coffee and sugar carried into the market and dealt out by pounds. It was rumored that an eminent stingy wealthy merchant (who is a bachelor) had a hogshead of coffee in his store which he refused to sell the committee under six shillings per pound. A number of females, some say a hundred, some say more, assembled with a cart and trunks, marched down to the warehouse and demanded the keys which he refused to deliver. Upon which one of them seized him by his neck and tossed him into the cart. Upon his finding no quarter, he delivered the keys when they tipped up the cart and discharged him; then opened the warehouse, hoisted out the coffee themselves, put into the trunks, and drove off. It was reported that he had personal chastisements among them, but this I believe was not true. A large concourse of men stood amazed, silent spectators of the whole transaction. I suppose these Boston dames thought they might have coffee since they could not have tea; and, indeed, the relative use of these two articles in America was much changed by the Revolution. To this day much more coffee is drunk in America, proportionately, than in England. We are not a tea-drinking nation. I don’t know that there were Daughters of Liberty in Philadelphia, but Philadelphia women were just as patriotic as those of other towns. One wrote to a British officer as follows:-- I have retrenched every superfluous expense in my table and family. Tea I have not drunk since last Christmas, nor have I bought a cap or gown since your defeat at Lexington. I have learned to knit and am now making stockings of wool for my servants. In this way do I now throw in my mite for public good. I know this, that as free I can die but once, but as a slave I shall not be worthy of life. I have the pleasure to assure you that these are the sentiments of my sister Americans. The women of the South were fired with patriotism; in Mecklenburgh and Rowan counties, North Carolina, Daughters of Liberty found another method of spurring patriotism. Young ladies of the most respectable families banded together, and pledged themselves not to receive addresses from any recreant suitors who had not obeyed the country’s call for military service.