Part 5

Every one watched it with great excitement. It looks a low, humble enough building now, but it seemed quite huge to old Boston. The people who had been opposed to it grew to like it when they realized how much they had needed a market. The magistrates and other officers of the town found that they could hold their meetings quite as well over the market as downstairs. They could come down and help their good wives carry home the day’s dinner when they had finished with more weighty matters.

Every one liked the weathervane. It could be seen for a long distance on land or sea, and its arrow never failed to fly north, south, east, or west. At first all Boston was puzzled by the figure on the top of the weathervane. It was different from any that they had ever seen. Persons came from a distance by stage-coach to see it. It shone and glittered in the sunlight.

“Who wrought it?” the people of Boston asked, and when they found out, the maker was acclaimed as almost a hero.

Patient old Deacon Drowne! He lived long enough to look up through his spectacles and see his great copper grasshopper perched on top of the weathervane of Faneuil Hall.

The grasshopper is there to-day. It has been on Faneuil Hall since 1742. It saw the Boston Tea Party, and heard the shots of the Lexington farmers. It heard the hoof beats of Paul Revere’s horse, and the splash of the oars of the British troops, rowing into Boston Harbor. It watched battle and ruin, and then saw the coming of peace and plenty again.

Thousands of storms have beaten against its copper wings and legs, but the good workmanship of the old smith has helped the grasshopper to stand them all. It has been replated and strengthened in places, but the main part of the figure remains just as Deacon Drowne made it, an emblem of the humble, but preserved for almost two centuries in beautiful workmanship.

PATIENCE ARNOLD’S SAMPLER

“Count your threads, Patience, child. You will do well to give better heed to your sewing than to the window. Methinks your eyes have been following the garden path over often the last half hour, and your work has suffered the while.

“Why, when I was a lass in Devon I had stitched six samplers before I was your age; and one of them had the entire Lord’s prayer upon it embroidered in letters of red so small that your grandame had to don her spectacles in order to spell it out.

“Ah, well, the girls of to-day are catching the spirit of the times—revolt against the old order and small patience with the new. I must be off, Patience, and across the orchard to Mistress Edwards’ with a bowl of curds. She has a mind that they cure her gout. Do you attend your work while I am gone. The sampler is almost finished. I can read the text at the top in spite of its crooked letters, dear child:

“‘A Soft Answer Turneth Away Wrath.’

“Here are all the letters of the alphabet, too, and now it remains only for you to embroider your name in the cross-stitch. Measure your stitches with great care, for you will likely begin it so near the border that you will have small space left for _Arnold_.

“I shall be back by tea time.” Mistress Arnold stooped to touch with one thin, white hand, stripped of all its jewels, the bowed, brown head of the little girl who sat by the window sewing.

“If you finish the sampler by five o’clock, you may go out in the garden and play. Oh—”

Mistress Arnold turned in the doorway, and pulled from the green silk reticule which hung at her side, a long iron key.

“I will leave the key to the barn in your charge, Patience, and on no account give it to any one until I return. Your father tells me that his store of powder and shot is increasing daily, and we are likely to need these before long.”

Mistress Arnold sighed as she stepped over the threshold and took her way—a tall, straight figure in gray crinoline—between the pink clouds that the apple blooms made, and then out of sight.

Small Patience Arnold, a little brown-eyed lass who had seen eight summers in the quaint, white-walled town of Lexington, watched her mother. Then she leaned back in the stiff, wooden chair that was so much too high for her, drawing a weary little sigh. It was very dull, indeed, and stupid to stay in the bare kitchen. All outdoors, the first bees, the robins, and the perfume of the apple trees called her. Oh, if she might only drop her sewing to the floor, and run out to the garden, darting in and out among the trees like a bluebird in her straight frock of indigo-dyed homespun. If she might only sing in her sweet, clear voice, above the hum of bees and birds, the songs that her mother knew—the songs of merry old England where every one was happy, and everything was gay!

But, no, she must not go. There was the square of rough cloth in her hand, and the sticky needle, and the thread that would knot in spite of Patience’s care. Every little girl in Lexington had finished a sampler, and some of them two, by the time they were nine. She must hurry, for the afternoon was wearing away. Soon the sun would drop behind the orchard. Such a long name it was to sew—Patience Arnold.

Patience took up her needle again and began to count the stitches and embroider the letters, P. A. T. There were so many of the letters, and they were very crooked, for all the world like the new minutemen whom her father drilled on the village green when it was dusk. No one saw the minutemen march and countermarch, and no one could hear their feet in the soft grass. Patience laughed to herself, a merry little trill of a laugh, as she bent over the letters of her work.

“You are Mistress Anderson’s lad who has such long legs and thinks he will be the captain of the militia some day.”

Patience pointed to the A.

“And you—” She put her needle in the T.

But a long shadow lay across the doorsill. There were other shadows on the grass outside. Where had they come from? Why, the orchard was full of soldiers. One stood, even now, in front of Patience—a most gallant gentleman in scarlet broadcloth and gold lace, holding his cocked hat in his hand and smiling down at the little girl.

“So the bumpkins of this little town of Lexington, too, have taken upon themselves the gentle art of soldiering. It is high time that his Majesty interfered.”

The man seemed to speak to himself. Then he bent so low over the little girl in her straight-backed chair that the gilt fringe which dangled from his epaulets brushed Patience’s cheek.

“Such a pretty little lass, and so industrious, as she sits alone in this great house—”

He paused, watching Patience’s trembling little brown fingers. She was frightened by this emissary of the King. Then he continued, “I would ask shelter for my men.”

He pointed to a score of soldiers in red coats who swarmed the dooryard now, laughing, brawling, and trampling on Mistress Arnold’s beds of savory herbs.

“The day is warm, and we have had a long march from Boston town. I would that my men might lie and rest a space on the cool hay of your barn, my little lady. We have tried the door, but we find it barred, and the key is missing from the padlock. Will you give me the key, little maid?”

Patience bent lower over her work as the last words came from the man’s lips. Reaching in her homespun pocket for the key which her mother had given her, she clasped it in her hand and held it underneath the sampler as she stitched the letters once more. For a second she did not speak. It seemed as if her throat was burning. Her lips were dry with fear. Then she looked up, smiling a wistful little smile.

“No, kind sir. I can not give you the key.”

“Oho, so the little lady is stubborn.”

The man crossed to the door and motioned to the waiting soldiers outside. In a second they had obeyed his summons, swarming Mistress Brewster’s clean kitchen and covering the spotless floor with the dust of the high road.

“Search the house!” commanded their leader. “Yonder stubborn girl is tongue-tied, and stubborn. She will neither give up the key, nor tell me where it is. Overturn the chests of drawers; tear up the carpets, break down the doors, spare nothing, I say, but bring me the key of yonder barn.”

No sooner were the words spoken than the work of pillage began. Sounds of doors and hinges wrenched from their places, the tramp of rough boots on the floor above her head, the rattle of chests told the frightened little Patience that the work of searching the house had begun. It seemed to her that the key would burn its way straight through her palm, so hot it was. Her hands trembled, and her eyes filled with tears so that she could scarcely see her needle. But still she stitched, never leaving her chair, nor lifting her white little face.

The soldier who had given the command remained in the kitchen pacing restlessly up and down, his arms folded, and a frown deepening on his forehead.

“P. A. T. I. E. N.”—Patience was nearing the edge of the sampler, and it was with difficulty that she stitched because of the key that lay underneath the cloth. The letters were, indeed, crooked and straggling, and lacking the precision of even those that spelled the text. There was no sound in the room, now, save the ticking of a tall clock and the tread of the soldier’s feet.

Suddenly the soldier in command stopped in front of Patience’s chair and laid a heavy hand on her little bare, brown arm. He spoke, and the words were full of anger.

“Enough of this nonsense! Give me the key, I say. I will have it!”

Patience slipped out of her chair and down to the floor, holding her sampler, covering the hidden key, as high as the man’s eyes. He loosed his grasp upon her arm, looking at her in wonder. Such a little lass, in her straight blue frock, and not as tall as his own little girl in England. She had the same soft eyes, though, and the same low, sweet voice.

“I would gladly give you what you wish, sir,” she began bravely, “but I promised my mother I would deliver the key to no one until she returned. Look!” She held the sampler still higher. “I am stitching my name. Is it not a stupid task on such a pretty day?”

“_A soft answer turneth away wrath._” The man read the text at the top of the sampler. Then he looked out of the window and farther than the apple trees.

“It is indeed neatly stitched, little lass,” he said. “My own Elizabeth is even now making her sampler, and wetting it with tears until I return to her, overseas.”

He gave a quick command to his men, who filed down the stairs, empty handed, and into the garden. Then he raised his hat in salute, and followed them as they marched slowly down the road and farther than Patience could see.

“My little girl—my Patience—are you safe?”

It was Mistress Arnold who ran across the orchard and into the kitchen, clasping the trembling little lass in her arms. “We saw the red coats from Mistress Brewster’s window and knew that they had been here. But you are unharmed—and the guns—the powder?”

“I spoiled my sampler, mother,” Patience gave a sobbing laugh as she held up her work with the crookedly stitched ending, and the unfinished name. “It is as you feared. I started my name too near the border and there is no room to finish it, but”—she held out the precious bit of iron, “here is the key.”

Sampler

A Soft Answer Turneth Away Wrath ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQ RSTUVWXYZ123456789 Patience Arnold

THE STAR LADY

From Tabitha Wells, aged ten, at Philadelphia, in the year 1776, to her cousin John Bradford, at Boston—a letter.

“My Dear John:

“It does seem more than a month ago that I said good-bye to you, and you took your long journey home again. Your visit was a bright spot in these troubled times. Do you remember the pair of robins that we watched building their nest in grandmother’s old apple tree. They have raised their brood of young ones now and the little birds have flown away. The old birds still live in the apple tree, though, and each day at sunrise and sunset they sing as if all the world were gay instead of fallen into this sad Revolution. And the early apples are as red as the coat of a British soldier and are dropping all over the grass of the garden.

“Grandmother gave me a pewter canister that used to hold tea—she knew it would be a long time before we have any more tea to put in it. I have filled it full of apples, one layer of fruit and then one of leaves to keep them from bruising. It is as sweet smelling as our garden, John, where you played with me so many happy days this spring. It is for you; the apples shall go to you by the next packet.

“But here I am writing you of such everyday matters as robins and apples, and wasting paper which is rising in price, and using up one of my grandfather’s best quill pens and his ink stone. I had other things in mind to tell you, John, when I started this letter—things of far greater importance.

“Strange happenings have come to your cousin Tabitha Wells in Philadelphia since she said goodbye to you, John. I feel as if I, a little girl of only ten summers, and not as learned as I should be, were of a part with these great and stirring times in the Colonies.

“To wit, as the barristers say. And now, my dear John, I will tell my story.

“I mind that we played so much at home when you visited me, John, that I had no time to take you to the little upholstery shop on Arch Street, near grandmother’s house, which is my special delight.

“It is kept by one Mistress Betsy Ross, not much more than a grown-up girl. They say she is little past twenty in years, and she has a great pleasure in letting me visit and watch her at work. Her husband was a brave young patriot of our Colonies and was but a brief space since killed. Mrs. Betsy always helped him in his shop and now that he will be there no longer, and she being most skillful with her needle, she is carrying on the work of the shop herself.

“When I have finished wiping the dinner service for grandmother, I often ask leave to go down for the rest of the afternoon to the shop of Mistress Betsy. I mind that we are both of us lonely; I, the only child in so quiet a house as this in which my father left me when he joined the army; and she a slim, sweet lady, all alone in her shop.

“Such pretty stuffs as she has, John! If you were a girl your eyes would stick out for envy, and your fingers ache for scissors and needle. She gave me a bit of yellow satin brocade, picked out with a pattern of butterflies. I made a court dress of it for my wooden doll—although grandmother says such finery is not for a doll even in these days.

“But here I am letting my quill go wandering again, John. It is not of my doll that I am minded to write you, but of the important thing that happened in the shop of Mistress Betsy Ross this summer time. I was there, John. I saw it with my own eyes.

“Mistress Betsy was fitting new covers to grandmother’s best fiddle-backed chairs, and I had come down to her shop to see if they were done. It chanced that they were, but I lingered a while for Mistress Betsy was busying herself at what she likes best to do. She was stitching a flag.

“You know, of course, John, that each of our American Colonies has its own flag, each of a different design, although they all favor the same colors, red, and white, and blue. Such days as these, when troops are marching to war, there is need of many flags, and so Mistress Betsy is as busy stitching them as she is in making her furniture covers. So quick and deft, she is, John.

“I wish you could but see how neatly she sews together the colors, and stitches on the designs. No scrap of cloth is wasted, and each flag that Mistress Betsy makes is quite perfect in shape and pattern. I mind that the packet had just brought Mistress Betsy some bundles of fresh stuff for her flag-making, red and blue, and she was looking it over as she spoke to me:

“‘Tabitha, child,’ Mistress Betsy said to me, ‘it would save me much time and work if I had one pattern for a flag. It tries my patience sorely to keep in my thoughts and at my fingers’ ends the patterns of thirteen.’

“‘So think I.’ The voice of a man surprised us, and we looked up to see a very grand gentleman standing in the door of the shop and looking at us. ‘I heard your speech just now, Mistress Ross,’ he said, ‘and it is even upon such an errand that I come to you. The Continental Congress is of a mind to adopt one flag that will be the flag of freedom and the emblem of the brave; one banner for the Colonies. The fame of your fine needlework has come to our ears, Mistress Ross, and we are here to consult with you in the matter.’

“The gentleman, very fine indeed in his blue broadcloth and gold lace, stepped into the little shop now, and behind him were other gentlemen in the uniform of the Colonies.

“I confess, John, that I was a bit awed, and I hid myself behind Mistress Betsy’s tall clock, where I could hear but not be seen. You see I was in my linsey-woolsey frock, not dressed for company. Mistress Betsy wore her long working apron over her chintz short gown, but she curtsied with great ease.

“‘You honor me, Mr. Washington,’ Mistress Betsy said. ‘I have been long of a desire to put my needle into one flag, and one only. What might be your wishes and that of the Congress in the pattern of this flag?’

“So this was the great Mr. Washington! My heart went pit-a-pat, John, as loudly it seemed to me as sounded the ticking of the clock. I tried to hold it quiet as I listened to Mr. Washington’s every word.

“‘We have not made any fixed design for an American flag, Mistress Ross,’ Mr. Washington said. ‘We feel that all the thirteen colonies should, in some way, have notice in it, and I have a great desire that there should be stars.’

“He took a quill from Mistress Betsy’s secretary and began making drawings on a piece of paper. Mistress Betsy looked over his shoulder and watched his long fingers, trying to see what manner of a flag he was designing.

“‘See, Mistress Ross,’ Mr. Washington said, ‘I should like stars like this one.’ He held up his drawing.

“Mistress Betsy took the drawing and looked at it, turning it first one way, and then the other. I came out from behind the clock and looked, too, for I was of a curious mind about this new flag. Oh, John, if you could have seen the strange, crooked star that Mr. Washington had drawn! He is a great soldier and statesman, without doubt, but he is not a draughtsman. I saw Mistress Betsy’s eyes twinkle, but she was quite sober and respectful when she spoke.

“‘You have your eyes on your men, Mr. Washington, during your night marches, not on the stars. Your star is drawn with six points, and it should have only five points. May I be so bold as to show you how to make a five-pointed star?’

“Then Mistress Betsy picked up a scrap of white cloth, folded it deftly into five parts, made one snip with her scissors and opened it. There was a perfect star with five points!

“Mr. Washington took it, and as he looked at it his stern face changed, and he smiled. Then he bowed as he turned to go.

“‘Well done, Mistress Ross,’ he said. ‘I have the idea of an American flag in my mind, but you have it in your fingers. Put your wits to the task of designing a flag to submit to the Congress, and I hope that the Colonies will see fit to adopt it. Good afternoon, Mistress of Flags!’ and Mr. Washington and his gentlemen had gone.

“Oh, John, how excited we were then! Mistress Ross took my hands in hers and she danced like a girl with me about the shop. Then she sat down in her big wooden rocking chair and took me in her lap. She put her arms around me and pulled my head close to hers. I thought she was going to cry as she spoke:

“‘Tabitha Wells,’ she said. ‘The chance has come to me to do something for my country. My husband died for the Colonies, but I, who must live, may perhaps make the flag that will wave in remembrance of him and of all the other patriots!’

“And I, knowing how she felt, could only hug her, not speaking because of a great choking in my throat.

“But we soon realized that it was not a time for tears, but for doing. Mistress Betsy jumped up, and thrust her hands deep into her colored stuffs.

“‘Only three colors for the flag of our country, Tabitha,’ she said, ‘red for the blood of her patriots, and blue for her truth, and white for her purity. But now, for the design?’ She laid the pieces of cloth together and tried them this way, and that.

“Oh, how we puzzled our minds, John, over that flag. Or Mistress Betsy did, while I looked on, and clapped my hands in pride for her. I forgot the time. It grew late, and grandfather had to come for me, but I went again the next day to Mistress Betsy’s shop, and for many days to watch her plan the pattern of our one flag.

“You see, my dear John, it was no easy task. Mr. Washington had said that he was of a mind to have the thirteen Colonies represented in it. Mistress Betsy, herself, was always of a mind to make her needlework good to look at because of its simplicity. So she cut, and stitched, and ripped, and then stitched again. It was a weary work and lasted through the burning of many candles, but at last Mistress Betsy finished her flag.

“Oh, John, if you could but see it! It is plain, which the better shows its bright colors of red, and white, and blue. It has seven long red stripes and six long white stripes, making thirteen in all, for the thirteen colonies. As I look at the stripes they mind me of the long way our Colonies are taking to their freedom. Then, in one corner of the flag is a large piece of blue cloth, and sewed to it with Mistress Betsy’s tiny stitches are thirteen stars. The stars are for our Colonies, too. Like stars, they will shine.

“And now comes the amazing part of this letter, which has tried you, I fear, with all its quill scratching. Mr. Washington is so greatly pleased with Mistress Betsy’s endeavor to carry out his wishes that her flag is to be adopted by the Congress. It will be our American flag forever, and ever. I, Tabitha Wells, know the sweet lady who made it. I can scarcely wait for my father to come home to tell him about it. The flag of our Union, John, and made here in Philadelphia and in the shop of my Mistress Betsy. I am going to call her my Star Lady after this.

“Your patience has been tried, dear John, I fear, in reading this long letter. I have had trouble with my quill, which would not travel over the paper as fast as my thoughts come. I hear that you are having stirring times in Boston, and I pray that you are safe, and well. I shall count the days until your letter comes.

“As soon as I can I will have a small flag made for you in the Star Lady’s shop. Perhaps I can send it by the same packet as the apples. So, you will remember Philadelphia well, John, by the fruit of our garden and by the first American flag.

“Your cousin,

“Tabitha Wells.”

THE FLAG OF THEIR REGIMENT

Prudence looked up from her sewing. It was a pleasant place to work, out there in the morning sunshine that trickled through the big white pillars of the broad piazza. The wide street was overarched by the leafy branches of the spreading elms, but the houses that lined the streets were strangely empty of life.

It was in Philadelphia in the long, long-ago time of the Revolution. Prudence was a quaint, demure little Colonist girl. In all her eleven years she had known nothing save the daily routine of the simple home; the scouring of floors, the polishing of copper kettles and brass andirons and mahogany chairs, the making of huge loaves of bread and yellow butter and round cheeses, the bleaching of linen, and the patching together of gay blocks of colored cloth to make log-cabin and morning-star bed quilts.