done in the destruction of stamped paper, if the Stamp Act. were repealed. Instead of answering by a burst of impassioned oratory as Patrick Henry might have done, or threatening violent measures if the act was not unconditionally repealed, as many another American would have done, cool-headed Franklin told the following story: "A Frenchman rushed out with a redhot poker and said to an Englishman, 'Will you let me run this poker into you?' 'No!' thundered the Englishman. Just a few inches,' screamed the Frenchman. 'Never!' replied the other. Then, will you pay me for the expense of heating the poker?'" It is confidently asserted that the British Ministry saw the point. At any rate, no more was said about conditions, and the Stamp Act was repealed.

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But an outbreak was inevitable, and in 1775 the man of moderation returned to America ready for war. To an acquaintance in England he addressed these characteristic words, Britain, at an expense of three million, has killed a hundred and fifty Yankees, which is twenty thousand pounds a head; and at Bunker Hill she gained a mile of ground, half of which she lost again. . . During the same time sixty thousand children were born in America. From this data your mathematical head will easily calculate the time and expense necessary to kill us all and conquer the whole territory."

.

Another of the strong men of 1775 was William Livingston, lawyer and organizer of the Sons of Liberty in New York City. He wrote many vigorous articles in the newspapers, and maintained that authority is derived from the people. In 1768 he wrote in the American Whig, "The day dawns in which the foundation of this mighty empire is to be laid by the establishment of a regular American Constitution."

In Elizabethtown, New Jersey, Mr. Livingston built a beautiful home, which he called Liberty Hall. Here he gathered about him a brilliant company of patriots. John Jay, Alexander Hamilton, his own brothers, and many others graced the entertainments at Liberty Hall. William Livingston himself was called by the British the "Arch Fiend." They ramsacked and attempted to burn his house a number of times during the

war, but were unable to capture the master of the estate himself.

Mr. Livingston's beautiful daughter Sarah became the wife of John Jay, afterwards the first chief justice of the United States. But while the Sons of Liberty in New York were doing their utmost to rouse the people to action against tyranny, this same organization in Boston was calling meetings and holding stirring debates.

About Faneuil Hall cluster most of the stories of these times. The free gift of a Huguenot merchant, the solid provincial building from the market stalls below to the grasshopper weather-vane on the belfry, fairly bristles with the sentiment "Resistance to Oppression." In the hall above the market, where, in later times, Massachusetts statesman have discussed union, slavery, Armenia, and education, James Otis, Samuel Adams, and many another once woke the echoes in thundering denunciation of tyranny.

What Boston was to Massachusetts, Williamsburg was to Virginia, and what Faneuil Hall was to Boston, the Raleigh Tavern was to Williamsburg. Here, to the old capital of the State, all the neighboring planters were accustomed to bring their families for the winter.

In the Apollo room of the tavern many a gay ball was held, when stately minuets were performed mid the sheen of brocade, satin, and gold lace, the glitter of silver buckles and the sound of merry chatter between pretty little Watteau damsels and the college boys of olden time. Thomas Jefferson, while in William and Mary College, writes rapturously of dancing with "Belinda" here in the Apollo room. Never was society at Williamsburg more brilliant than on the eve of the Revolution. On the 27th of May, 1774, the Virginia House of Burgesses was to give a ball in honor of Lady Dunmore, the wife of the Royalist Governor. Unfortunately, a day or two before the event, the Burgesses passed some resolutions regarding taxation and tyranny which displeased Governor Dunmore and he promptly dissolved the House. The gentlemen withdrew from the capital, assembled in the Apollo room of the tavern and re-affirmed all their resolutions, thus beginning the long contest with that staunch Royalist, Governor Dunmore.

The Virginia Gazette for May 27 records the dissolution of the House of Burgesses, and also announces the ball at the Capitol that evening.

The situation was, to say the least, unusual, but the assembly was held. In the same room where Patrick Henry had once roused the echoes in his passionate denunciation of the Stamp Act, the irate Governor and his family were entertained by the defunct House of Burgesses.

The year 1775 is remarkable for one other event, the introduction of a song into the musical literature of our country.

Though we Americans are so disgracefully recent, though we have no Iliad, no Beowulf, no Niebelungen Lied, about whose authorship we may speculate and be studious, we have one classic whose origin is enveloped in impenetrable clouds of mystery; one national ode, if we may so call it, which has more authors than Hamlet, more sources than the great river of our continent. I refer to the song known throughout the length and breadth of the land as "Yankee Doodle." No less than eleven well-authenticated stories cluster about its birth, and two or three times that number obviously variations of the original eleven. We will not attempt to plow through them all, but casting aside much which is evidently rubbish, we can assume as probable history the following:

Washington Irving discovered that the tune was an ancient Biscayan sword dance. It may, therefore, come from the Moors, or it may be purely Biscayan. If the latter, it would be impossible to guess how old it may be. Certain it is that the Basques were in a flourishing condition in Europe before the ancestors of Homer and Romulus began to migrate from Central Asia. Possibly, who knows, it was the martial strains of "Yankee Doodle" which inspired them to successfully resist that Aryan invasion, so that to this day they retain their racial characteristics. At any rate the air is a very ancient one, and has traveled through several countries.

Kossuth recognized it as an old Hungarian air.

Later it found its way to England, and the cavaliers used it as a sort of rogue's march. Then, for the first time, were words joined with the tune, and the cavaliers called derisively to Cromwell:

"Old Noll now has come to town

Riding on a pony,

He stuck a feather in his cap

And called him Macaroni."

Macaroni, be it understood, was the name of a fashionable club in sixteenth century London-a club of traveled young men who set the styles for the beaux of the town.

Cromwell's solitary plume in that day of feathers and ribbons was regarded as an awkward attempt to follow the fashion.

Then comes an age of fable. In various places in America, in various months of the year 1775 various Redcoats were curiously inspired to write a certain set of verses in derision of the Yankee soldiers, and, I regret to say, claimed to compose the air also. Time would fail us to enumerate the authors of

this song.

But in the very first battle, Lexington, it was played by the British. During all that year little was heard around Boston but the inevitable "Yankee Doodle," meant for derision by the English, defiantly adopted and played by the rebels; and finally, in poetic retribution, the sprightly march that signalled the opening of the war at Lexington was played now by American fifers at Yorktown, and set the pace for the army of Cornwallis as they marched up to surrender their arms to General Washington. MABEL W. Soule,

Stamford Chapter.

WASHINGTON IN FOREIGN PORTS.

WHEN we least expected to see it, last winter in our journeyings, we came upon traces of General Washington. I took up a guide book while we were in Trinidad, and lo, there was a record of Washington. He had visited the neighboring Island of Barbadoes in 1751, in company with an invalid half-brother, Lawrence Washington. There was a tender affection between them, and George accompanied his elder brother, who was threatened with consumption, in a search for health in the pleasant climate of the West Indies. It was Lawrence who named Mount Vernon after Admiral Vernon, of the English fleet under whom he had served in an expedition against

Carthagena in 1740. George Washington was then a young man of twenty. He had been a licensed surveyor in Virginia for three years, and had been commissioned one of the adjutant generals of Virginia with the rank of major and the pay of one hundred and fifty pounds a year. He virtuously kept a diary while he was there, and it was interesting to see the paragraphs and also to notice how he spelled, or rather how he did not spell. The record says, "Dined at the fort with some ladys. It is pretty strongly fortifyed, and mounts about thirty-six guns." A day or two after that he says he was "strongly attacked with the small Pox; sent for Dr. Lanham." The attack, however, lasted only from the 17th of November to the 12th of December, as he was out again on that date, and the small pox seems to have been a mere trifle in the events of his days.

He goes on with his diary and his spelling league with the u in the wrong place, pleasant with only one a. But his quaint phrasing is delicious when he says he was "agreeably entertained," genteely received by Col.. this & judge thta. When he left Barbadoes he says he weighed anchor and he spells it "wai’d.”

Again in Caraccas, in Venezuela, we come upon pleasant traces of our beloved hero. A plaza is devoted to him, with a fine bronze statue in its center, benignantly lifting his right hand as if to give a friendly greeting to Simon Bolivar, also in bronze on a prancing steed in another and larger plaza hard by. When Venezuela received last winter Mr. Cleveland's message of the 17th of December, 1895, they flocked to the plaza of Washington and covered the pedestal of the statue with flowers-tuberoses, jessamines, and roses that with us are rigorously shut up in green houses at that time of the year. Then they formed for a rejoicing march to the house of the American minister, General Allen M. Thomas. They covered him with glory as bearing the mantle of General Washington -and some embarrassment with it-General Thomas had to make a speech in response to all this enthusiasm of at least fifteen minutes and in that time he must not commit his Government or himself in any way. There must not be a breath of war in what he said and yet there must be warmth and kind