ams were especially excepted.

It was Samuel Adams who, perceiving that Virginia was apt to be lukewarm
in aiding a war which was to be fought mostly in the North, suggested
the appointment of Virginia's favorite son, George Washington, as
commander-in-chief of the American army, and who seconded the motion to
that effect made by John Adams. He lived to see his dream of
independence realized, and his grave in the old Granary burying ground
at Boston is one of the pilgrimage places of America.

With his name that of John Hancock is, as we have seen, closely
associated. The worldly circumstances of the two were very different,
for Samuel Adams was always poor, while John Hancock had fallen heir to
one of the greatest fortunes in New England. He was only twenty-seven at
the time, and his fortune made a fool of him, as sudden wealth has a way
of doing. It was at this time, being young and impressionable, he met
Samuel Adams, a silent and reserved man, fifteen years his senior and
regarded by his neighbors as a harmless crank. But there was something
about him which touched Hancock's imagination--and touched his
pocketbook, too, for about the first thing Adams did was to borrow money
from him.

Hancock was no doubt glad to lend the money, for he had more than he
knew what to do with, and spent it in such a lavish manner that he was
soon one of the most popular men in Boston. So when one of his ships was
seized for smuggling in a cargo of wine, all his friends and employees
got together and paraded the streets, and a lot of boys and loafers
joined them, for drink was flowing freely, and pretty soon there was a
riot, and the troops were called out and fired a volley and killed five
men, and the rest of the mob decided that it was time to go home, and
went. And that was the Boston massacre about which you have heard so
much that it would almost seem to rank with that of St. Bartholomew.
But, as the Irishman remarked, the man who gets his finger pinched makes
a lot more racket than the one who gets his head cut off; and the Boston
massacre, for all the hullabaloo that was raised about it, was merely
an insignificant street riot. No doubt Samuel Adams did his full share
in fanning that little spark into a conflagration!

For Adams had acquired great influence over Hancock, and that vapid
young man was fond of being seen in the company of the older one. Adams
was anxious to secure Hancock for the revolutionary cause, and soon h