Maid Sally

by Harriet A. Cheever

For England was bound to tax the people of the Colonies for tea, beyond what they were willing to stand. And very patient had the Colonists been. Eight years before this there had been a Stamp Act put upon them by the mother country, trying to make them put a stamp on all their law papers, newspapers, and such things.

But this had made the people of the Colonies so very angry that the law was laid aside.

Now, strange as it may seem, there were yet some of the people who did not quite know whether it was right to stand up and say that England was wrong, and they would not stay on her side, or to think that they ought to obey the king in everything simply because he was the king, and it seemed wrong to break away from his rule.

And Sir Percival Grandison, really a fine, noble gentleman, found it hard to make up his mind as to what was entirely right or wrong in the important question.

Sally was now so much a student that nothing, it seemed, could stand in the way of her books and her swift way of learning. She understood all about the trouble with England, and there was not a more decided, staunch little American patriot than was she.

You know a patriot is one who loves well his or her own country, and Sally was a true, staunch young Colonist. And Mistress Kent listened in surprise to some things she said that winter, wondering that a mere child should know her own mind so well.

"I suppose," she said one day, "that we ought to love the king and obey him. But here we are way off by ourselves in another country, where the people have their own homes, and fields and lands of their very own. And why should they want to keep taxing us harder and harder over in England, when we owe them nothing at all, and ask nothing of them? I wouldn't pay such unjust claims!"

Mistress Kent was timid, and watched carefully her speech, and could only warn the out-spoken child to be careful herself.

"The times are hot and full of threat," she said, "it is feared there may be fighting before long; it were better to watch our words."

And Sally tried to be prudent, although it tried her sorely when Mistress Cory Ann would raise her voice and declare that folks were fools who thought it best to oppose the king. But she said those things most frequently when the men were away.