But the hand of the pestilence was stayed, and her country again engrosses her thoughts. She very early declares herself for independence, and wonders how any honest heart can hesitate at adopting the same sentiment. An attempt to drive the enemy from Boston is meditated, and she tells us that she has been kept in a state of anxiety and expectation. "It has been said 'to-morrow' and 'to-morrow' for this month; but when this dreadful to-morrow will be, I know not. But hark! The house this instant shakes with the roar of cannon. I have been to the door, and find it a cannonade from our army." The militia are all ordered to repair to the lines. The result was thus related: "I have just returned from Penn's Hill, where I have been sitting to hear the amazing roar of cannon, and from whence I could see every shell which was thrown. The sound, I think, is one of the grandest in nature, and is of the true species of the sublime. * * * I could no more sleep than if I had been in the engagement: the rattling of the windows, the jar of the house, the continual roar of twenty-four pounders, and the bursting of shells, give us such ideas, and realize a scene to us of which we could form scarcely any conception. * * * All my distress and anxiety is at present at an end. I feel disappointed. This day our militia are all returning without effecting any thing more than taking possession of Dorchester Hill. I hope it is wise and just, but, from all the muster and stir, I hoped and expected more important and decisive scenes. I would not have suffered all I have for two such hills." The British soon afterwards evacuated Boston, and Massachusetts never again became the theatre of war.