Now she was alone, and she writes to her husband, “The desolation of war is not so distressing as the havoc made by the pestilence. Some poor parents are mourning the loss of three, four, and five children, and some families are wholly stripped of every member.” December found Mr. Adams once more at home to cheer his suffering family, but Congress demanded his presence, and after a stay of one month, he returned again to the halls of the nation. March came, and her anxious, solitary life was in nowise brightened. The distance, in those days of slow travel and bad roads, from Boston to Philadelphia was immense, and letters were precious articles hard to receive. In speaking of the anticipated attack on Boston, she says: “It has been said to-morrow and to-morrow; but when the dreadful to-morrow will be I know not.” Yet even as she wrote, the first peal of the American guns rang out their dissonance on the chilling night winds, and the house shook and trembled from cellar to garret. It was no time for calm thoughts now, and she left her letter unfinished to go out and watch the lurid lights that flashed and disappeared in the distance. Next morning she walked to Penn’s Hill, where she sat listening to the amazing roar, and watching the British shells as they fell round about the camps of her friends. Her home at the foot of the hill was all her earthly wealth, and the careful husbanding of each year’s crop her only income; yet while she ever and anon cast her eye upon it, the thoughts that welled into words were not of selfish repinings, but of proud expressions of high-souled patriotism. “The cannonade is from our army,” she continues, “and the sight is one of the grandest in nature, and is of the true species of the sublime. ’Tis now an incessant roar. To-night we shall realize a more terrible scene still; I wish myself with you out of hearing, as I cannot assist them, but I hope to give you joy of Boston, even if it is in ruins before I send this away.” But events were not ordered as she feared, and the result was more glorious than she dared hope. All the summer the army lay encamped around Boston, and in early fall her husband came home again, after an absence of nearly a year. Yet his coming brought her little satisfaction, since it was to announce the sad truth that he had been chosen Minister to France. Could he take his wife and little ones? was the oft-recurring question. A small and not very good vessel had been ordered to carry him: the British fleet knew this, and were on the watch to capture it. On every account it was deemed best he should go alone, but he finally concluded to take his eldest son, John Quincy Adams, to bear him company, and in February, 1778, sailed for Europe.