In looking back to the beginning of the Revolutionary War, when that great wrench was made which separated America from the parent country, we have a feeling that men's minds were wholly occupied with the tremendous issues at stake; yet, as we study the old records, we find the same buying and selling, the planting and reaping, the same pondering and planning of dress and the trifles of daily life going on much in the old fashion. In Jefferson's private note-book, under date of July 4th, 1776, the day of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, I find, entered in his own hand, the item: "For seven pairs of women's gloves, twenty shillings." Even so do great things and small jostle one another in this strange world of ours, and a woman's glove lies close to the document which changed the fate of nations. News, Trade and Travel [Illustration: News, Trade, and Travell] In the early days, the highways of the Cavalier Colonies were the broad waters of bay and sound; their by-ways, the innumerable rivers and creeks; and their toll-gates, the ports of entry. Road-making was tedious and costly, and the settlers saw no reason for wasting time and energy in the undertaking, when nature had spread her pathways at their feet, and they needed only to step into a canoe, or a skiff manned by black oarsmen, to glide from one plantation to another; or to hoist sail in a pinnace for distant settlements. Many animals travel, but man is the only one who packs a trunk, and, except a few like the nautilus and the squirrel, the only one who sails a boat. There is a sentiment connected with a ship, which no other conveyance can ever have. The very names of those old colonial vessels are redolent of "amber-greece," "pearle," and treasure, of East India spices and seaweed "From Bermuda's reefs, and edges Of sunken ledges In some far-off bright Azore." The history of the colonies might be written in the story of their ships. There were _The Good Speed_, _The Discovery_, and _The Susan Constant_, which preceded the world-famous _Half Moon_ and _Mayflower_ to the new world. There were _The Ark_ and _The Dove_ that brought over Lord Baltimore and his colonists; _The Sea-Venture_ which went to wreck on the Somer Isles; and _The Patience_, and _The Deliverance_ which brought her crew safe to Virginia. These were the pioneers, followed by a long line of staunch craft, large and small, from the _Golden Lyon_ to _The Peggy Stewart_, which discharged her cargo of taxed tea into Chesapeake Bay.