st favorable
advantages, the work stands alone in its sphere.

1. The evening of the fifth came on. The young moon was shining brightly
in a cloudless winter sky, and its light was increased by a new-fallen
snow. Parties of soldiers were driving about the streets, making a parade
of valor, challenging resistance, and striking the inhabitants
indiscriminately with sticks or sheathed cutlasses.

2. A band, which poured out from Murray's barracks, in Brattle Street,
armed with clubs, cutlasses, and bayonets, provoked resistance, and a fray
ensued. Ensign Maul, at the gate of the barrack yard, cried to the
soldiers: "Turn out, and I will stand by you; kill them; stick them; knock
them down; run your bayonets through them." One soldier after another
leveled a firelock, and threatened to "make a lane" through the crowd.

3. Just before nine, as an officer crossed King Street, now State Street,
a barber's lad cried after him: "There goes a mean fellow who hath not
paid my father for dressing his hair;" on which, the sentinel stationed at
the westerly end of the customhouse, on the corner of King Street and
Exchange Lane, left his post, and with his musket gave the boy a stroke on
the head, that made him stagger and cry for pain.

4. The street soon became clear, and nobody troubled the sentry, when a
party of soldiers issued violently from the main guard, their arms
glittering in the moonlight, and passed on, hallooing: "Where are they?
where are they? Let them come."

5. Presently twelve or fifteen more, uttering the same cries, rushed from
the south into King Street, and so by the way of Cornhill towards Murray's
barracks. "Pray, soldiers, spare my life," cried a boy of twelve, whom
they met. "No, no, I'll kill you all," answered one of them, and knocked
him down with his cutlass. They abused and insulted several persons at
their doors and others in the street; "running about like madmen in a
fury," crying, "Fire!" which seemed their watchword, and, "Where are
they? Knock them down." Their outrageous behavior occasioned the ringing
of the bell at the head of King Street.

6. The citizens, whom the alarm set in motion, came out with canes and
clubs; and, partly by the interference of well-disposed officers, partly
by the courage of Crispus Attucks, a mulatto, and some others, the fray at
the barracks was soon over. Of the citizens, the prudent shouted, "Home!
home!" others, it is said, cried out, "Huzza for the main guar