ds in fear and wonder from their
beds! Here I stand,--a triumphant author! Huzza! Huzza! My brain has
set the town on fire! Huzza!"

MY KINSMAN, MAJOR MOLINEUX

After the kings of Great Britain had assumed the right of appointing
the colonial governors, the measures of the latter seldom met with the
ready and generous approbation which had been paid to those of their
predecessors, under the original charters. The people looked with most
jealous scrutiny to the exercise of power which did not emanate from
themselves, and they usually rewarded their rulers with slender
gratitude for the compliances by which, in softening their instructions
from beyond the sea, they had incurred the reprehension of those who
gave them. The annals of Massachusetts Bay will inform us, that of six
governors in the space of about forty years from the surrender of the
old charter, under James II, two were imprisoned by a popular
insurrection; a third, as Hutchinson inclines to believe, was driven
from the province by the whizzing of a musket-ball; a fourth, in the
opinion of the same historian, was hastened to his grave by continual
bickerings with the House of Representatives; and the remaining two, as
well as their successors, till the Revolution, were favored with few
and brief intervals of peaceful sway. The inferior members of the court
party, in times of high political excitement, led scarcely a more
desirable life. These remarks may serve as a preface to the following
adventures, which chanced upon a summer night, not far from a hundred
years ago. The reader, in order to avoid a long and dry detail of
colonial affairs, is requested to dispense with an account of the train
of circumstances that had caused much temporary inflammation of the
popular mind.

It was near nine o'clock of a moonlight evening, when a boat crossed
the ferry with a single passenger, who had obtained his conveyance at
that unusual hour by the promise of an extra fare. While he stood on
the landing-place, searching in either pocket for the means of
fulfilling his agreement, the ferryman lifted a lantern, by the aid of
which, and the newly risen moon, he took a very accurate survey of the
stranger's figure. He was a youth of barely eighteen years, evidently
country-bred, and now, as it should seem, upon his first visit to town.
He was clad in a coarse gray coat, well worn, but in excellent repair;
his under garments were durably constructed of leather, and fitt