ing willows; and--I won't--take it." And he didn't take it,
consoling himself with the reflection "that he would be like Gen.
Washington in one thing, anyhow."

PUSSY DEAN'S BEACON FIRE.

March 17, 1776.

A hundred years ago the winds of March were blowing.

To-day the same winds rush by the stone memorials and sweep across the
low mounds that securely cover the men and the women that then were
alive to chill blast and stirring event. Even the lads who gathered at
sound of drum and fife on village green, wishing, as they saw the
troopers march, that they were men, and the little girls who hung
about father's neck because he was going off to war, who watched the
post-riders on their course, wishing that they knew the news he
carried, are no longer with us.

For nearly two years Boston had been the lost town of the people. It
had been taken from the children by an unkind father and given to
strangers. You have been told how British ships came and closed her
harbor, so that food and raiment could not enter. You know how grandly
the younger sister towns behaved toward stately, hungry Boston; how
they marched up the narrow neck of land that holds back the town from
the sea, each and every one bearing gifts to the beloved town, until
there came the sad and fatal day wherein British military lines turned
back the tide of offerings and closed the gate of entrance.

Then it was that friends began to gather across the rivers that wound
their waters around Boston. Presently an army grew up and stationed
itself with leaders and banners and forts.

Summer came. The army waited through all the long warm days. The
summer went; the leaves fell; the chill winds and the cold sea-fogs
wound into and out of the poor little tents and struck the brave men
who, having no tents, tried to be strong and endure.

Every child knows, or ought to know, the story of that winter; how day
by day, all over New England, men were striving to gather firearms and
powder wherewith to take back from the foe poor Boston. But, alas,
there was not powder enough in all the land to do it.

The long, wearying winter had done its worst for the prisoned
inhabitants within the town; and, truly, it had tried and pinched the
waiting friends who stood at the gates.

At last, in March, in the night, the brave helpers climbed the hills,
built on them smaller hills, and by the light of the morning were able
to look over into the town--at which the patrio