mother, she suspected some dangerous venture and peremptorily ordered
them to hold their tongues and not come to her with any of their
mischief. She was thus able to reply to the officer charged with the
inquisition that she knew nothing of the matter, and such was the
rigid obligation of the truth in that Puritan community that even
the danger of a court-martial would not have induced her to tell
a falsehood, however the truth might compromise the family. The
officers, who well knew their sometime hosts, were so well assured
of this that the seniors were at once acquitted, and, regarding the
girls, they were too gentlemanly to push an inquiry which might have
punished a childish freak with the gravest military consequences, for,
as the officer on the quest said, "Even it's being a woman would not
protect the author of such a grave insult to the flag." Irrepressible
as they were, in spite of the danger they had so narrowly escaped,
they, not much later, stole the sword of one of the officers when they
were all temporarily quartered on the preacher, and, when the island
was evacuated by the British forces, brought it out and gave it to the
brother, an officer in the American army.

A feat of practical housewifery, which my mother used to tell
of, shows another side of the Rhode-Islander, which is not less
illustrative of the stock. One of the boys of the pastor's family
volunteered, or was drawn, in the militia for active service; but, as
he had no clothes fit for the camp, the sisters had a black and white
sheep brought from the pasture and clipped, and within twenty-four
hours had spun, woven, and made up a suit of mixed gray clothes for
the brother to go to the war in. No doubt such things have been done
in many another home, even in later times, but this is the home I have
to deal with, and in this my mother grew up. She was the eldest of a
family of five, left motherless when she was sixteen. Her father was