the pictures. The countryman refused, and
the informer did the act himself, and was
hooted by the boys all the way home. The
first thing he did was to snatch up a gun, and
threaten the boys, to which they replied by
snowballing his house. He fired from a
window and killed a boy—an innocent little
fellow, who had never dreamed of being a
martyr so early, if at all, and who was
declared not to have been concerned in throwing
the snowballs—no harm if he had. Boys
would be no boys if they were too timid or
proper- behaved to snowball a fellow who
destroyed their pictures, and then took up a
gun when they told him their minds about it.
But here was a martyr already; and so
stands this young fellow in history. He was
the first person slain in the American
revolution, which instituted a new order of
government and a new method of social existence
in the world. Not all Boston only, but a great
number of citizens from the country attended
his funeral. All were aware of something
portentous in the solemnity of the funeral of
that boy; and not a few said to each other
that another great act in the world's history
had opened over his grave. Snowballs
immediately became significant, as every incident
becomes typical in times of strong popular
excitement. Eleven days after the death of
the first victim the first great riot occurred,
and it began with snowballing a sentinel.
The more soldiers gathered, or were
marched to the spot, the more snowballs
were thrown, till, their patience being
exhausted, they fired, in consequence of some
unknown person having uttered the word
"fire!" Three persons were killed, several
were wounded; and the revolution was begun.
It is a marked feature of that time that
the soldiers went about with bludgeons,
when not allowed to carry other arms,
threatening and using overbearing language to
every citizen who looked them in the face.
We shall find a parallel to this, as well as
to other incidents, when we glance over the
events of the present summer.

Next came the curious affair of the tea.
It was hoped in England, and by the royalists
in America, that tea would be admitted when
other articles were not, because it was sent
by the East India Company; but tea was
taxed without the consent of the colonists,
like other articles; and it was therefore
forbidden, after a public meeting of the
citizens, to be landed. The merchants to whom
it was consigned refused to say that they
would not receive it; but, alarmed by sundry
tokens that this was to be the occasion of
conflict, they proposed to advise their British
correspondents to take back the tea. This
was not enough. The tea should not even
pass the custom-house, it was decided; and
twenty-five men were set to watch over it
to prevent its being touched by friend or
foe. A public meeting was held, which
disowned the governor's order to disperse,
and at which it was avowed that they must
fight for their rights and liberties, or lose
them. Summonses were sent through the
state for the citizens of outlying places to come
into Boston, and witness the existing state of
things, and see what should be done. There
would have been a battle about the tea, if a
company of unknown men had not ventured
upon a curious proceeding to render it
unnecessary. The watch consisted, as we have
said, of twenty-five men. Double that number
retired from the meeting, turned their coats,
and some say otherwise disguised themselves,
quietly went on board in the dusk, and
emptied out all the tea into the dock. This
was the true declaration of war against Great
Britain by her North American colonies. This
was the act by which some fifty gentlemen of
Boston put their necks in peril, and committed
themselves and their families to the dire
chances of a great revolution. Tender wives
and discreet children in fifty houses forbore
to ask, that late autumn night, where the
head of the house had been. One such wife
there was, who, thinking her husband's shoes
might be damp, took them up, when he had
put on his slippers, to dry them, and found
in them a quantity of tea. She concealed her
consternation, emptied and wiped them
carefully, shook the rest of his clothes, and asked
no questions till the King of England ceased
to have power in the United States.

A great and memorable revolution was
that, ushered in by these incidents.
Incidents more solemn and more striking seem
now, in this summer of eighteen hundred and
fifty-four, to indicate that a change not less
weighty is at hand. Massachusetts is now a
sovereign State, and Boston is a metropolis.
The inhabitants have now been trained in
political action for eighty years; and that
action has made them so proud of their
nationality, such devout worshippers of their
Federal Union, that any great and general
commotion, political or social, must proceed
from some prodigious cause, and involve vast
consequences. What has just been, and is
still, happening at Boston, does indeed deserve
the most earnest attention of all who are
interested in human welfare and social
wisdom.

After Massachusetts became a sovereign
State, her people abolished negro slavery—
chiefly, it may be observed, through the
sensible, persevering, and most virtuous efforts
of a negro woman, called Mum Bet, to obtain
her own freedom. She got it; and that of all her
race followed. Many years after, Massachusetts
made a law like that of England,
whereby every slave that touches her soil
becomes free. Other of the New England
States made a similar law; and the inhabitants
fondly believed that they had done with
negro slavery for ever. But, alas! they were
in federal union with slave States, which have
found means, through the apathy or timidity,
or worse, of the free States, to control the