lag, but married Miss Polly and lived quietly in
Concord until his death in 1790. Thus love won from the enemies of
America at least one sword, and thus was romance justified of its works.

The patriotic spirit which flamed throughout the land burned with no
steadier or more brilliant glow than among the women. All are familiar
with the famous picture entitled _The Spirit of '76_; but that picture
is incomplete. The octogenarian and the boy should be waved upon their
march by the wife and the mother, sending husband and son forth to peril
or death, while they themselves turn with a smile to the bearing of
privation or actual starvation. Not more strongly and nobly did the
"spirit of '76" flourish in the hearts of the sons of the oppressed
country than in those of its daughters, nor was the response more
splendid.

There was no distinction of high and low. The stately dame, lapped in
luxury all her days and a stranger to hardship or even anxiety, gave up
to her country's cause her dearest joys, and not only sent husband or
son to the forefront of the battle, but herself, if she was in the path
of war, bore unflinchingly the outrages of an incensed soldiery and saw
her home given to the flames and the very lives of herself and her
children threatened, and yet thought it not too great a price to pay for
her country's liberty. The wife of the humble tiller of the soil, with
perhaps even more complete, though hardly as recognized, surrender of
self, sent forth with cheery words the breadwinner, the support of
herself and her children, and turned with grand courage to keep them and
herself from hunger, while her goodman was fighting for the rescue of
his native land from oppression. Each bore her part, and all with no
reserve of gift.

The ebullition of the feminine spirit of those days was often little
less than fanatical in nature. Women do nothing by halves; they are
faithful lovers and enthusiastic haters, and they are not always
governed in either feeling by the monitions of unbiased justice or even
judgment. In a letter from Mrs. Hannah Winthrop, of Cambridge, we find a
reference to the fight at Lexington, which, in all its stiltedness of
language, shows the fiery and bitter hatred that was held by patriot
women for the enemies of their country: "Nor can she ever forget, nor
will old Time ever erase, the horrors of that midnight cry, preceding
the bloody massacre at Lexington, when we were roused from the benign
slum