from no sacrifice, nor would I shrink from any. 'Tis not
that I do not wish you to risk your life in war,--I am a daughter of my
race, and for centuries they have been soldiers, and what God sends
soldiers upon the field, that I can abide,--but that you should go now,
with all your prospects, your ability, the opportunity presented you, and
engage yourself in this fatal cause, in this unholy attack upon the
king's majesty, connect yourself with this beggarly rabble who have been
whipped and beaten every time they have come in contact with the royal
troops,--I cannot bear it. You are a man now. You have grown away from
your mother, Hilary, and I can no longer command, I must entreat." But
she spoke very proudly, for, as she said, entreaty was not so usual to
her as command.

"Oh, mother, mother, you make it very hard for me. You know the
colonists have been badly treated, and hardly used by king and
Parliament. Our liberties have been threatened, nay, have been
abrogated, our privileges destroyed, none of our rights respected, and
unless we are to sink to the level of mere slaves and dependants upon the
mother country, we have no other course but an appeal to arms."

"I know, I know all that," she interrupted impatiently, with a wave of
her hand. "I have heard it all a thousand times from ill-balanced
agitators and popular orators. There may be some truth in it, of course,
I grant you; but in my creed nothing, Hilary, nothing, will justify a
subject in turning against his king. The king can do no wrong. All that
we have is his; let him take what he will, so he leaves us our honor, and
that, indeed, no one can take from us. It is the principle that our
ancestors have attested on a hundred fields and in every other way, and
will you now be false to it, my boy?"

"I must be true to myself, mother, first of all, in spite of all the
kings of earth; and I feel that duty and honor call me to the side of my
friends and the people of this commonwealth. I have hesitated long,
mother, in deference to you, but now I have decided."

"And you turn against two mothers, Hilary, when you take this
course,--old England, the mother country, and this one, this old mother,
who stands before you, who has given you her heart, who has lived for
you, who lives in you now, whose devotion to you has never faltered; she
now humbly asks with outstretched arms, the arms that carried you when
you were a baby boy, that you remain true t