The lady was shocked to hear of the cruel treatment designed for her sectarian brethren that had just come over, and she hastened away directly, to spread the intelligence among all her acquaintances, in the hope, as she said, that something might be done to prevent the infliction of so unmerited a punishment. And the doctor congratulated himself on the success of the jest by which he had gotten rid of a troublesome visiter. A son of Dr. Byles, that retired to Halifax, must have probably inherited a portion of his father’s mantle; for his sisters repeated to me one of his conundrums, the humor of which almost atones for its coarseness—“Why do the leaders of insurrections resemble men that like sausages?”—“Because they are fond of intestine broils.” The Miss Byleses told me much of the scarcity of provisions and fire-wood, throughout Boston, during the winter of 1775, when the British and their adherents held out the town against the Yankee rebels, as they called them—and who had invested it every-where on the land side, taking especial care that no supplies should pass in. It was then that the old North Church was torn down by order of General Howe, that the soldiers might convert into fuel the wood of which it was built. By the bye, Mrs. Corder, an aged and intelligent female, living at the North end, informed me that, when a little girl, she witnessed from her father’s house on the opposite side of the way, the demolition of this church; and that she was terrified at the noise of the falling beams and of the wooden walls, as they battered them down, and at the shouting and swearing of the soldiers as they quarrelled over their plunder. Nevertheless, when the work of destruction was over, and the soldiers all gone, she and other children of the neighborhood ran out to scramble among the rubbish—and she found and carried home a little wooden footstool or cricket, that had evidently been thrown out from one of the demolished pews. I bought of my informant (who was in indigent circumstances) this humble and time-darkened relic, and it is now in possession of my youngest niece. To return to the daughters of Dr. Byles.—They still lamented greatly over the privations endured that winter by the British army shut up and beleaguered in Boston; though certainly the same sufferings were shared by all the inhabitants that remained in the town.—And they grieved accordingly, to think that these inconveniencies finally compelled their English friends to take to their ships and depart.