Had they lived in 1862 instead of 1775, how their doors would have been beset by engravers and paper-dealers and printers! What baskets of letters would have been poured upon their tables! How would they have dreaded the sound of the knocker or the cry of the postman! But, alas! paper was so far from abundant that generals were often reduced to hard straits for enough of it to write their reports and despatches on; and that Congressmen were not much better off will be believed when we find John Adams sending his wife a sheet or two at a time under the same envelope with his own letters. Printers there were, as many, perhaps, as the business of the country required, but not enough for the eager contention which the announcement of Government work to be done excites among us in these days. And of engravers there were but four between Maine and Georgia. Of these four, one was Paul Revere of the midnight ride, the Boston boy of Huguenot blood whose self-taught graver had celebrated the repeal of the Stamp Act, condemned to perpetual derision the rescinders of 1768, and told the story of the Boston Massacre,--who, when the first grand jury under the new organization was drawn, had met the judge with, "I refuse to sarve,"--a scientific mechanic,--a leader at the Tea-party,--a soldier of the old war,--prepared to serve in this war, too, with sword, or graver, or science,--fitting carriages, at Washington's command, to the cannon from which the retreating English had knocked off the trunnions, learning how to make powder at the command of the Provincial Congress, and setting up the first powder-mill ever built in Massachusetts. No mere engraver's task for him, this engraving the first bill-plates of Continental Currency! How he must have warmed over the design! how carefully he must have chosen his copper! how buoyantly he must have plied his graver, harassed by no doubts, disturbed by no misgivings of the double mission which those little plates were to perform,--the good one first, thank God! but then how fatal a one afterward!--but resolved and hopeful as on that April night when he spurred his horse from cottage to hamlet, rousing the sleepers with the cry, long unheard in the sweet valleys of New England, "Up! up! the enemy is coming!" The paper of these bills was thick, so thick that the enemy called it the paste-board money of the rebels. Plate, paper, and printing, all had little in common with the elaborate finish and delicate texture of a modern bank-note. To sign them was too hard a tax upon Congressmen already taxed to the full measure of their working-time by committees and protracted daily sessions; and so a committee of twenty-eight gentlemen not in Congress was employed to sign and number them, receiving in compensation one dollar and a third for every thousand bills.