bout with grave faces, while gay and sober alike were
touched by the spell. The Tory gentry, to be sure, rattled about in
their gilded mahogany coaches, in spite of jeers and sour looks. My Aunt
Caroline wore jewelled stomachers to the assemblies,--now become dry and
shrivelled entertainments. She kept her hairdresser, had three men in
livery to her chair, and a little negro in Turk's costume to wait on her.
I often met her in the streets, and took a fierce joy in staring her, in
the eye. And Grafton! By a sort of fate I was continually running
against him. He was a very busy man, was my uncle, and had a kind of
dignified run, which he used between Marlboro' Street and the Council
Chamber in the Stadt House, or the Governor's mansion. He never did me
the honour to glance at me. The Rev. Mr. Allen, too, came a-visiting
from Frederick, where he had grown stout as an alderman upon the living
and its perquisites and Grafton's additional bounty. The gossips were
busy with his doings, for he had his travelling-coach and servant now.
He went to the Tory balls with my aunt. Once I all but encountered him
on the Circle, but he ran into Northeast Street to avoid me.

Yes, that was the winter when the wise foresaw the inevitable, and the
first sharp split occurred between men who had been brothers. The old
order of things had plainly passed, and I was truly thankful that my
grandfather had not lived to witness those scenes. The greater part of
our gentry stood firm for America's rights, and they had behind them the
best lawyers in America. After the lawyers came the small planters and
most of the mechanics. The shopkeepers formed the backbone of King
George's adherents; the Tory gentry, the clergy, and those holding office
under the proprietor made the rest.

And it was all about tea, a word which, since '67, had been steadily
becoming the most vexed in the language. The East India Company had put
forth a complaint. They had Heaven knows how many tons getting stale in
London warehouses, all by reason of our stubbornness, and so it was
enacted that all tea paying the small American tax should have a rebate
of the English duties. That was truly a master-stroke, for Parliament to
give it us cheaper than it could be had at home! To cause his Majesty's
government to lose revenues for the sake of being able to say they had
caught and taxed us at last! The happy result is now history, my dears.
And this is not a history, tho' I wish it w