that three months sometimes
intervened between the letters from her husband. In 1774, when John
Adams was at Philadelphia, such a short distance from Boston, according
to the modern conception, she wrote: "Five weeks have passed and not one
line have I received. I would rather give a dollar for a letter by the
post, though the consequences should be that I ate but one meal a day
these three weeks to come."[305]

Again, these women faced actual dangers; for they were often near the
firing line. John Quincy Adams says of his mother: "For the space of
twelve months my mother with her infant children dwelt, liable every
hour of the day and the night to be butchered in cold blood, or taken
and carried into Boston as hostages. My mother lived in unintermitted
danger of being consumed with them all in a conflagration kindled by a
torch in the same hands which on the 17th of June [1775] lighted the
fires of Charlestown. I saw with my own eyes those fires, and heard
Britannia's thunders in the Battle of Bunker Hill, and witnessed the
tears of my mother and mingled them with my own."

In 1777, so anxious was the mother for news of her husband, that John
Quincy became post-rider for her between Braintree and Boston, eleven
miles,--not a light or easy task for the nine-year-old boy, with the
unsettled roads and unsettled times. Even the President's wife was for
weeks at a time in imminent peril; for the British could have desired
nothing better than to capture and hold as a hostage the wife of the
chief rebel. Washington himself was exceedingly anxious about her, and
made frequent inquiry as to her welfare. She, however, went about her
daily duties with the utmost calmness and in the hours of gravest danger
showed almost a stubborn disregard of the perils about her.
Washington's friend, Mason, wrote to him: "I sent my family many miles
back in the country, and advised Mrs. Washington to do likewise, as a
prudential movement. At first she said 'No; I will not desert my post';
but she finally did so with reluctance, rode only a few miles, and,
plucky little woman as she is, stayed away only one night."[306]

During the first years of the war nervous dread may have composed the
greater part of the suffering of American women, but during the later
years genuine hardships, lack of food and clothing, physical
catastrophes befell these brave but silent helpers of the patriots.
Especially was this true in the South, where the British ov