e essential to soldiership than to wear red coats, and march in stately
ranks to the sound of regular music.

Still was heard the beat of the drum--rub-a-dub-dub!--and now a host of
three or four thousand men had found their way to Boston. Little quiet was
there then! Forth scampered the school-boys, shouting behind the drums.
The whole town--the whole land--was on fire with war.

After the arrival of the troops, they were probably reviewed upon the
Common. We may imagine Governor Shirley and General Pepperell riding
slowly along the line, while the drummers beat strange old tunes, like
psalm-tunes, and all the officers and soldiers put on their most warlike
looks. It would have been a terrible sight for the Frenchmen, could they
but have witnessed it!

At length, on the twenty-fourth of March, 1745, the army gave a parting
shout, and set sail from Boston in ten or twelve vessels, which had been
hired by the governor. A few days afterwards, an English fleet, commanded
by Commodore Peter Warren, sailed also for Louisbourg, to assist the
provincial army. So, now, after all this bustle of preparation, the town
and province were left in stillness and repose.

But, stillness and repose, at such a time of anxious expectation, are hard
to bear. The hearts of the old people and women sunk within them, when
they reflected what perils they had sent their sons, and husbands, and
brothers, to encounter. The boys loitered heavily to school, missing the
rub-a-dub-dub, and the trampling march, in the rear of which they had so
lately run and shouted. All the ministers prayed earnestly, in their
pulpits, for a blessing on the army of New England. In every family, when
the good man lifted up his heart in domestic worship, the burthen of his
petition was for the safety of those dear ones, who were fighting under
the walls of Louisbourg.

Governor Shirley, all this time, was probably in an ecstasy of impatience.
He could not sit still a moment. He found no quiet, not even in
Grandfather's chair, but hurried to-and-fro, and up and down the staircase
of the Province House. Now, he mounted to the cupola, and looked sea-ward,
straining his eyes to discover if there were a sail upon the horizon. Now,
he hastened down the stairs, and stood beneath the portal, on the red
freestone steps, to receive some mud-bespattered courtier, from whom he
hoped to hear tidings of the army.

A few weeks after the departure of the troops, Commodore Warren s