The Whole History of Grandfather's Chair: Or, True Stories from New England History, 1620-1808Hawthorne, Nathaniel
History
The Whole History of Grandfather's Chair: Or, True Stories from New England History, 1620-1808
Hawthorne, Nathaniel
Massachusetts -- History -- Colonial period, ca. 1600-1775 -- Juvenile literature
MY DEAR SIR, I came from my house at Milton, the 26 in the morning.
After dinner it was whispered in town there would be a mob at night, and
that Paxton, Hallowell, the custom-house, and admiralty officers’
houses would be attacked; but my friends assured me that the rabble were
satisfied with the insult I had received and that I was become rather
popular. In the evening, whilst I was at supper and my children round
me, somebody ran in and said the mob were coming. I directed my children
to fly to a secure place, and shut up my house as I had done before,
intending not to quit it; but my eldest daughter repented her leaving
me, hastened back, and protested she would not quit the house unless
I did. I could n’t stand against this, and withdrew with her to a
neighboring house, where I had been but a few minutes before the hellish
crew fell upon my house with the rage of devils, and in a moment with
axes split down the doors and entered. My son being in the great entry
heard them cry: “Damn him, he is upstairs, we’ll have him.” Some ran
immediately as high as the top of the house, others filled the rooms
below and cellars, and others remained without the house to be employed
there.
Messages soon came one after another to the house where I was, to inform
me the mob were coming in pursuit of me, and I was obliged to retire
through yards and gardens to a house more remote, where I remained until
4 o’clock, by which time one of the best finished houses in the Province
had nothing remaining but the bare walls and floors. Not contented with
tearing off all the wainscot and hangings, and splitting the doors to
pieces, they beat down the partition walls; and although that alone
cost them near two hours, they cut down the cupola or lanthorn, and they
began to take the slate and boards from the roof, and were prevented
only by the approaching daylight from a total demolition of the
building. The garden-house was laid flat, and all my trees, etc.,
broke down to the ground.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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