ather's description, this was the most gloomy time
that Massachusetts had ever seen. The people groaned under as heavy a
tyranny as in the days of Sir Edmund Andros. Boston looked as if it were
afflicted with some dreadful pestilence,--so sad were the inhabitants,
and so desolate the streets. There was no cheerful hum of business.
The merchants shut up their warehouses, and the laboring men stood idle
about the wharves. But all America felt interested in the good town of
Boston; and contributions were raised, in many places, for the relief of
the poor inhabitants.

"Our dear old chair!" exclaimed Clara. "How dismal it must have been
now!"

"Oh," replied Grandfather, "a gay throng of officers had now come
back to the British Coffee House; so that the old chair had no lack of
mirthful company. Soon after General Gage became governor a great many
troops had arrived, and were encamped upon the Common. Boston was now
a garrisoned and fortified town; for the general had built a battery
across the Neck, on the road to Roxbury, and placed guards for its
defence. Everything looked as if a civil war were close at hand."

"Did the people make ready to fight?" asked Charley.

"A Continental Congress assembled at Philadelphia," said Grandfather,
"and proposed such measures as they thought most conducive to the public
good. A Provincial Congress was likewise chosen in Massachusetts. They
exhorted the people to arm and discipline themselves. A great number of
minutemen were enrolled. The Americans called them minute-men, because
they engaged to be ready to fight at a minute's warning. The English
officers laughed, and said that the name was a very proper one, because
the minute-men would run away the minute they saw the enemy. Whether
they would fight or run was soon to be proved."

Grandfather told the children that the first open resistance offered
to the British troops, in the province of Massachusetts, was at Salem.
Colonel Timothy Pickering, with thirty or forty militia-men, prevented
the English colonel, Leslie, with four times as many regular soldiers,
from taking possession of some military stores. No blood was shed on
this occasion; but soon afterward it began to flow.

General Gage sent eight hundred soldiers to Concord, about eighteen
miles from Boston, to destroy some ammunition and provisions which
the colonists had collected there. They set out on their march on the
evening of the 18th of April, 1775. The next morn