In 1775, a good lady lived on the seaboard, about a day's march from Boston, where the British then were. By some unaccountable mistake, a rumor was spread, in town and country, in and about her residence, that the regulars were on a march for that place, where they would arrive in about three hours. This was after the battle of Lexington, and all, as might be supposed, was in sad confusion; some were boiling with rage and full of fight; some in fear and tribulation were hiding their treasures; others flying for life. In this wild moment, when most people, in one way or another, were frightened from propriety, our heroine, who had two sons, aged respectively nineteen and sixteen, was seen preparing them to discharge their duty in the emergency. The eldest she was enabled to equip in fine style; she took her husband's fowling-piece, "made for duck or plover," (the good man being absent on a coasting voyage to Virginia,) and with it, the powder-horn and shot-bag. But the lad, thinking the duck and geese-shot not quite the size to kill regulars, his mother, with the chisel, cut up her pewter spoons, hammered them into slugs, put them into his bag, and he set off in great earnest, calling a moment, on the way, to see the parson, who said: "Well done, my brave boy. God preserve you!" The youngest was importunate for his equipments, but his mother could find nothing to arm him with but an old rusty sword. The boy seemed unwilling to risk himself with this alone, lingering in the street until his mother thus upbraided him: "You, John H——, what will your father say, if he hears that a child of his is afraid to meet the British? Go along; beg or borrow a gun, or you'll find one, child; some coward, I dare say, will be running away; then take his gun and march forward! If you come back, and I hear you have not behaved like a man, I shall carry the blush of shame on my face to the grave." She then shut the door, wiped the tear from her eye, and abided the issue. There were not wanting American ladies whose wit and courage could bring the blush of shame or anger to the haughty faces of the British officers. There is scarcely a more stinging retort on record than that which was given to the insolent Tarleton by a lady at Washington, before whom he was boasting his feats of gallantry. Said he: "I have a very earnest desire to see your far-famed hero, Colonel Washington." "Your wish, Colonel, might have been fully gratified," she promptly replied, "had you ventured to look behind you at the battle of the Cowpens." [Illustration: Molly Pitcher at Monmouth.—_Page_ 44. ] It was in that battle that Washington had wounded Tarleton, which gave rise to an equally pointed remark from Mrs. Wiley Jones, to whom Tarleton had observed: "You appear to think very highly of Colonel Washington; yet I have been told that he is so ignorant a fellow that he can hardly write his own name."