Having received no letters from Mr. Beasley, we now gave up all hope of exchange, gave ourselves up to our condition, and resigned our destiny into the hands of Heaven to deal with us as he pleased, during the long captivity which we believed we had to endure; for, seeing the English papers filled with accounts of the success of their arms in Europe, and every day declaring their full confidence of a complete conquest of America, we could not expect peace, though this boasting did not frighten us, for we knew the strength and valor of the American people. On the 18th we established a coffee-house in our prison, as the French had in theirs, and sold coffee at a penny a pint; but you cannot think it very delicious when I inform you that it could not be bought under two and three pence per pound, and molasses seventy per hundred weight. At the same time some of the prisoners received money from home, and all established themselves in some kind of business. Some established themselves as tobacconists; others as potato merchants, butter merchants, and indeed almost all kinds of merchandise were carried on in our prison after we received our second payment: we had “free trade and sailors’ rights.” We could purchase any article of provision in the markets; coffee, sugar, molasses, any thing the country afforded. The gates being now opened, we traded with the French. We could buy potatoes at six-pence a score, butter at one and six-pence per pound; and as for meat, that was out of the question altogether. Every man began to use all the economy he could, which he perceived the French did. Some went to work for the French at making straw flats, at which they could earn one penny per day. Others were employed in making list shoes, some in the manufactory of hair bracelets, necklaces, &c.; while great numbers employed themselves in working the bones we got out of the beef, in imitation of the French, who were very ingenious, and would form the most admirable and beautiful ships, plank, mast, and rig them all of bone. The French, for their amusement, had regular plays in a theatrical form, with very elegant scenery, once a month. Hamlet’s ghost was an easy part to act, for they had only to show their natural visage, being mere shadows themselves. They had excellent music, and appropriate comic and tragic dresses. They also had schools for teaching the arts and sciences, dancing, fencing, and music, and each of these in great perfection. As numbers of them were daily receiving money from France, their prison was very rich. But No. 4, where the sons of liberty had lived so long on the vapor of a dungeon, when will the same be said of you? Perhaps some victim as unhappy as myself, when some ten years have rolled away, and the human mind, compelled by stern necessity to invent, and I myself have found my _quietus_ behind the prison-walls, may tell a sorry story of splendid misery within your gloomy gates.