In the spring he was exchanged for a better man, Colonel Markham, but no amount of food, as he swore, ever enabled him to make up for the scant fare he had had in the camp of the Continentals.
The twins and Tom lived to enjoy many Christmas Days, but none like that they spent with the army at Valley Forge in the hard winter of 1777-8.
A TEMPEST IN A BIG TEA-POT[N]
By Samuel Adams Drake
About the Boston Tea-party and the Indians who brewed the tea.
CHANCE has led us to the spot on which the house of Governor Winthrop stands. But by the side of it, in a crowded neighborhood, is a brick church with a fine and lofty steeple pricking the frosty air of a December afternoon. There is a dense crowd of men, with a sprinkling of women, arguing and gesticulating about the door, but the interior is so choked up with people that we can scarcely elbow our way in. The men’s faces, we notice, are flushed and excited, and here is an angry buzz of half-suppressed voices. Evidently something out of the common has brought these people here. What can it be?
Ah! they are all talking about tea.
“You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink,� one says, very significantly, to his neighbor.
“Aye, and they can send us tea but can’t make us drink,� responds his neighbor.
“Let them take it back to England, then, and peddle it out there,� ejaculates a third. “We will not have it forced down our throats,� he adds.