“Is ’t so bad as that?” marvelled Mr. Meredith, as, passing by the parlour, he was shown into the kitchen, and a chair set for him before the fire.
“Thee knows the tenets of our faith, and that I accept them,” replied the Quaker. “Yet the last few days have made me feel that non-resistance—”
“Thomas!” reproved his sister. “Say it not, for when the curse is o’er, ’t will grieve thee to have even thought it.”
If the tempered spirit of the elders spoke thus, it was more than the warm blood of youth could do, and Tabitha gave a loose to her woes.
“’T is past endurance!” she cried, “to come and treat us all as if we were enemies who had no right even to breathe. They take possession of our houses and turn them into pig-sties with their filthy German ways; they eat our best and make us slave for them day and night; they plunder as they please, not merely our cattle and corn, so that we are forced to beg back from them the very food we eat, but take as well our horses, our silver, our clothes, and whatever else happens to please their fancy. The regiment of Lossberg has at this moment nine waggon-loads of plunder in the Fremantle barn. No woman is safe on the streets after sundown, and scarcely so in the day-time, while night after night the town rings with their drunken carousals. I told Friend Penrhyn the other night that if he had the spunk of a house cat he would get something to fight with, if ’t were nothing better than a toasting-fork tied to a stick, and cross the river to Washington; and so I say to every man who stays in Trenton. I only wish I were not a female!”
“Hush, Tabitha!” chided Miss Drinker, “’t is God’s will that we suffer as we do, and thee shouldst bow to it.”
“I don’t believe it ’s God’s will that we should be turned out of our rooms and made to live in the garret, or even in the barns, as some are forced to do; I don’t believe it’s God’s will that they should have taken our silver tea-service and spoons. If God is just, He must want Washington to beat them, and so every man would be doing God’s work who went to help him.” Evidently with whatever strength her father and aunt held to the tenets of their sect, Tabitha’s was not sufficiently ingrained to stand the test of the Hessian occupation.
“Dost think it is God’s work to kill fellow-mortals?” expostulated Miss Drinker. “No more of such talk, child; it is time we were making ready for supper.”
There was, however, very much more talk of this kind over the hastily improvised meal, and small wonder for it. In a town of less than a thousand inhabitants, nearly thirteen hundred troops, with their inevitable camp followers, were forcibly quartered, filling every house and every barn, to the dire discomfort of the people. As if this in itself were not enough, the Hessian soldiery, habituated to the plundering of European warfare, and who had been sold at so much per head by their royal rulers to fight another country’s battles, brought with them to America ideas of warfare which might serve to conquer, but would never serve to pacify, England’s colonies. Open and violent seizure had been made, without regard to the political tenets of the owner, of every kind of provision; and this had generally been accompanied with stealthy plundering of much else by the common soldiery, and, indeed, by some of the officers. Thus, in every way, despite their submissions and oaths of allegiance to King George, the Jerseymen were being treated as if they were enemies.
Of this treatment the Drinker family was a fair example. Without so much as “by your leave,” Colonel Rahl had taken possession of the first two floors of their house for himself and the six or seven officers whom he made his boon companions. Moreover, Mr. Drinker was called upon to furnish food, firewood, and even forage for them; while his servants were compelled to labour from morning till night in the service of the new over lords.