ng in their several districts the anxiously
awaited tidings from Congress or battlefield.

Fortunate indeed were the families whose homes were not disturbed by the
military operations. From Boston, New York, and Philadelphia, families
were sent hastily to the country until the progress of the war made it
possible to return to such comforts as had not been destroyed by the
British soldiers. The "Memoirs of Eliza Morton," afterward Mrs. Josiah
Quincy, but a child eight years of age in seventeen hundred and
seventy-six, gives a realistic account of the life of such Whig
refugees. Upon the occupation of New York by the British, her father, a
merchant of wealth, as riches were then reckoned, was obliged to burn
his warehouse to save it from English hands. Mr. Morton then gathered
together in the little country village of Basking Ridge, seven miles
from Morristown, New Jersey, such of his possessions as could be hastily
transported from the city. Among the books saved in this way were the
works of Thurston, Thomson, Lyttleton, and Goldsmith, and for the
children's benefit, "Dodsley's Collection of Poems," and "Pilgrim's
Progress." "This," wrote Mrs. Quincy, "was a great favorite; Mr.
Greatheart was in my opinion a hero, well able to help us all on our
way." During the exile from New York, as Eliza Morton grew up, she read
all these books, and years afterward told her grandchildren that while
she admired the works of Thurston, Thomson, and Lyttleton, "those of
Goldsmith were my chief delight. When my reading became afterward more
extensive I instinctively disliked the extravagant fiction which often
injures the youthful mind."

The war, however, was not allowed to interfere with the children's
education in this family. In company with other little exiles, they were
taught by a venerable old man until the evacuation of Philadelphia made
it possible to send the older children to Germantown, where a Mr. Leslie
had what was considered a fine school. The schoolroom walls were hung
with lists of texts of Scripture beginning with the same letter, and for
globes were substituted the schoolmaster's snuffbox and balls of yarn.
If these failed to impress a child with the correct notions concerning
the solar system, the children themselves were made to whirl around the
teacher.

In Basking Ridge the children had much excitement with the passing of
soldiers to Washington's headquarters in Morristown, and with watching
for "The Post" who