The correspondence with Longman is kept up with great activity through the whole of the first third of the volume before us. Gradually, however, Hancock had been growing into a larger way of business, and his Bills of Exchange for £500 and £600, drawn generally by Mr. Peter Faneuil,[4] begin to be of more frequent occurrence,--bills which he writes his London correspondents "are Certainly very Good, & will meet with Due Honour." We read here and there of ventures to _Medara_ and to _Surranam_, and of certain consignments of "Geese and Hogges to y'e New Found Land." "Be so Good," he says, in a letter of May 17th, 1740, to a friend then staying in London, "as to Interist me in y'e half of 8 or 10 Ticketts when any Lottery's going on, you think may doe, and am oblidged to you for mentioning your Kind intention herein. Please God y'e Young Eagle, Philip Dumerisque Com'r comes well home, and I believe I shall make no bad voyage." It is easy to see that the snug little business of the "Stationers' Arms" is soon to be given up, for what Drake[5] describes as "the more extensive field of mercantile enterprise."[6] By this time, too, the signs of the French War began to loom alarmingly upon the horizon of the little colony, and Hancock rose with the occasion to the character of a man of large and grave affairs. Cox's man, and his Trunks and Sortments of Books, appear, after this, to have but little of his attention. There was need of raising troops, and of fitting out vessels; and when the famous expedition against Louisburg was determined on, Hancock had a large share in the matter of providing its munitions and equipment. His correspondence with Sir William Pepperell in these great affairs still lies preserved in good order in boxes in the attic of the old mansion. Meanwhile, as he rose in the world, he had been laying out his grounds, and building and furnishing his house; his first letter from which is addressed to his "Dear Friend," Christopher Kilby, then in London, and is dated, rather grandly, "At my house in Beacon Street, Boston y'e 22'd Mar. 1739-40." Let us look back, then, a little over the yellow, time-stained record of the letter-book before us, and see what were the experiences of a gentleman, in building and planting in Beacon Street, so long before our grandfathers were born.