est took place in the Hall about the beginning
of the year 1761, when the news was received in Boston that King George
II. had fallen dead in his palace at Kensington, and that George III.,
his grandson, had been proclaimed king. It required just two months for
this intelligence to cross the ocean. The first thing in order, it
seems, was to celebrate the accession of the young king. He was
proclaimed from the balcony of the town house; guns were fired from all
the forts in the harbor; and in the afternoon a grand dinner was given
in Faneuil Hall. These events occurred on the last day but one of the
year 1760.

The first day of the new year, 1761, was ushered in by the solemn
tolling of the church bells in the town, and the firing of minute guns
on Castle Island. These mournful sounds were heard all day, even to the
setting of the sun. However doleful the day may have seemed, there was
more appropriateness in these signs of mourning than any man of that
generation could have known; for with George II. died the indolent but
salutary let-them-alone policy under which the colonies enjoyed
prosperity and peace. With the accession of the new king the troubles
began which ended in the disruption of the empire. George III. was the
last king whose accession received official recognition in the thirteen
colonies.

I have hunted in vain through my books to find some record of the dinner
given in Faneuil Hall to celebrate the beginning of the new reign. It
would be interesting to know how the sedate people of Boston comported
themselves on a festive occasion of that character. John Adams was a
young barrister then. If the after-dinner speeches were as outspoken as
the political comments he entered in his Diary, the proceedings could
not have been very acceptable to the royal governor. Mr. Adams was far
from thinking that England had issued victorious from the late
campaigns, and he thought that France was then by far the most brilliant
and powerful nation in Europe.

A few days after these loyal ceremonies, Boston experienced what is now
known there as a "cold snap," and it was so severe as almost to close
the harbor with ice. One evening, in the midst of it, a fire broke out
opposite Faneuil Hall. Such was the extremity of cold that the water
forced from the engines fell upon the ground in particles of ice. The
fire swept across the street and caught Faneuil Hall, the interior of
which was entirely consumed, nothing remaining b