“Great ship-loads were sent over, but they wouldn’t let it be landed, and at last they grew so angry that they boarded a ship loaded with tea and lying in Boston harbor, and threw the chests of tea into the water.
“That was the Boston ‘tea-party’ that is so often spoken of in talking about the struggle between the colonies and Great Britain. That happened in 1773; then the next year—1774—there was another tea-party or something like it, though not exactly, in New Jersey. It was at a small place called Greenwich on the Cohansey.
“A brig named the Greyhound, commanded by Captain Allen, came up the river to Greenwich, and on the 22d of November landed her load of tea there.
“It was put into a cellar not very far from the wharf, and somebody that saw it ran and told some one else.
“The news spread very fast. People were astonished and angry; they had never expected such a cargo to come there, and they had no notion of letting it stay; for most of them were quite as patriotic as the Boston people.
“So a party of them disguised themselves, assembled together in the dusk of the evening, got the chests of tea out of that cellar, carried them to an old field, piled them up there and set them on fire; burned them entirely up.”
“Quite as good a way to get rid of them as by throwing them into the sea, I think,” commented Marian. “But wasn’t any one punished for it?”
“Not that I ever heard or read of,” replied Lulu. “I suppose nobody who would have wanted to tell knew who the men were that did the deed.”
“I think they had something of the spirit of our Scotch folk of early times, who would never submit to be ruled by the English,” remarked Marian.
“Yes; papa has told me that a good many who did good service to their country in the Revolution, were of Scotch, and Scotch-Irish descent. He says it is a race that never would brook oppression.