Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1912 edition. Excerpt: ... Chapter xv The Continental Congress These are the times that try men's souls; the summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now deserves the thanks and love of man and woman.--T. Paine (in 1776). that midsummer journey of the Massachusetts delegates to the First American Congress in 1774, was akin to the Canterbury Pilgrimage. A modern Chaucer might divertingly relate the experiences of the four wayfarers as they travelled across country on their three weeks' drive to Philadelphia. Leaving the house of Thomas Cushing, in Bromfield Street, the foggy morning of August 10, they started with some parade to fulfil their instructions to "cement a lasting and permanent friendship with the mother country." The yellow coach and four, with mounted white guards in front and liveried blacks in the rear, took a turn around Boston Common, in sight of the British regiments there encamped, and rolled off to Watertown. As they passed the soldiers, one of the horses balked, until a British officer, pushing his head inside the coach, sardonically inquired if they had not harnessed in a Tory steed by mistake. Sam Adams's admiring neighbors raised a purse to fit him. out with a new coat, breeches, hat, and wig. John Adams, the scribe of the company, had laid in quills and paper for his correspondence with Abigail. Paine, the most experienced traveller of the party, carrying a white canvas bag and ivory-tipped cane, played the role of jester. Speaker Cushing, "a harmless kind of man," was not quite so poor as his colleagues and could pay for tobacco and Madeira along the way; but having property at stake, Cushing was so indifferent to the experiment of independence that he was...
