stilions in scarlet and white liveries. This was an
English style of equipage, and the public sentiment of that day demanded
that the commander-in-chief should adopt it. She was accompanied by her
son, and was escorted from place to place by guards of honor. Her
arrival in Cambridge was the signal for great rejoicing. The army
received her with the honors due to her illustrious husband.

She immediately took charge of Washington's headquarters, and soon
became as popular in the domestic and social circle as her husband was
in camp and field. It was at Cambridge that she was first called "Lady
Washington."

As an illustration of Washington's rigid discipline, an incident is
related of his manner of suppressing a disturbance. It was during the
winter he was besieging Boston.

A party of Virginia riflemen met a party of Marblehead fishermen. The
dress of the fishermen was as singular to the riflemen as that of the
riflemen was to the fishermen, and they began to banter each other.
Snow-balls soon began to fly back and forth, and finally hard blows were
interchanged. A melee occurred, in which a thousand soldiers
participated.

Hearing of the disturbance, Washington hastened to the scene, and,
leaping from his horse, he seized two burly Virginians by the neck, and
held them out at arm's length, at the same time administering a rebuke
in words that scattered the combatants as suddenly as a cannonade would
have done.

The British army committed many depredations in Boston during the year
they held possession of it. They tore out the pulpit and pews of the Old
South Church, and converted it into a riding-school for General
Burgoyne's light-horse regiment. They took down the North Church and
used it for fuel. They used up about three hundred wooden houses in the
same way.

In the winter a theatre was established for the entertainment of the
British soldiers. At one time a British officer wrote a farce entitled,
"The Blockade of Boston," to be played on a given evening. It was a
burlesque upon Washington and the American army. It represented the
commander-in-chief of the American army as an awkward lout, equipped
with a huge wig, and a long, rusty sword, attended by a country booby as
orderly sergeant, in a rustic garb, with an old fire-lock seven or eight
feet long.

The theatre was filled to overflowing on the night the farce was
announced. It happened that, on the same night, General Putnam sent a
party of two hundr