Some of his biographers have said that this love of frolic yielded at last to the rigorous discipline of his parent, but this is a mistake. Many years after this, when on a visit to Block Island, to the family of the lady who subsequently became his wife, dancing and riding were his chief amusements, and many persons remember to have seen him in his house at Newport, after the close of the war, amusing himself by playing with his wife the old game of poor puss wants a corner. About this time there was a considerable change in domestic affairs, his father purchased a new mill at Coventry, a few miles distant from his home, and made him the director. For the first time in his life he felt that he was his own master, and possessing a small share in the concern, his resources were enlarged, together with the means of employing them. His library, which had been but scantily supplied, now felt the benefit of this change, for it soon reached to between two and three hundred volumes, which at that period was considered an extensive affair. He now began to feel of some importance in the neighborhood in which he had made his new home. He began also to take an active part in public affairs, and was soon the means of establishing the first public school at Coventry, the result of the interest he took in all that related to the cultivation of mind. In 1770 he was elected to the General Assembly of the Colony, and from his zeal in the general cause, he continued to be returned for the town of Coventry until sometime after his appointment to the command of the Southern army. As a member of the Assembly he was distinguished for his dispassionate and patient investigation. A portion of a correspondence of this period is still preserved, which shows how steadily he kept in view the cultivation and expansion of his mind. In 1769 a circumstance took place which caused much excitement, in which Greene took a conspicuous position. It was the burning of the _Gaspee_ in Providence river. On this occasion Greene’s bold and unequivocal expression of his sentiments drew upon him the suspicions of the royal agents, and it was expected he would have been summoned before the special tribunal convened at Newport to trace out and condemn the destroyers of the Gaspee.