pleasure a few days later
she set herself to the establishing of a home in that city which was
to be her first residence as a married woman. And well did she carry
out her design to make John Hancock a worthy comrade, for besides
accomplishing all the necessary duties of a housekeeper, she quickly
acquired the dignity and reserve needed for the wife of a man filling
such a prominent position in the colonies during the war for
Independence. There was much lavish living and extravagant elegance of
dressing, with which she was obliged to vie, even in the town where
the Quakers were so much in evidence; and meeting, as she did, many
persons of social and political importance, it was impossible for
pretty Dorothy to be as care-free and merry now as she had been in the
days when no heavy responsibilities rested on her shoulders.

So well did she fill her position as Madam Hancock that she won golden
opinions from the many distinguished men and women who came together
under Hancock's hospitable roof-tree; her husband noting with ever
increasing pride that his Dolly was more deeply and truly an American
woman in her flowering than ever he could have dreamed she would
become when he fell in love with her on that Sunday in June. And
loyally did he give to her credit for such inspiration as helped to
mold him into the man who received the greatest honors in the power of
the colonists to bestow.

With the later life of Dorothy Hancock we are not concerned; our rose
had bloomed. It matters not to us that Madam Hancock was one of the
most notable women of the Revolution, who had known and talked with
George Washington, that she and Martha Washington had actually
discussed their husbands together. To Dorothy's great pride Mrs.
Washington had spoken enthusiastically of Hancock's high position,
while at that time her husband was but a general. Then, too, pretty
Madam Hancock had known the noble Lafayette--had met in intimate
surroundings all those great and patriotic men who had devoted their
best endeavors to the establishment of a free and independent America.
All that is no concern of ours in this brief story of the girl,
Dorothy, nor is it ours to mourn with the mother over the death or
her two children, nor ours to wonder why, three years after the death
of her beloved husband, a man who had made his mark in the history of
his country, she should have married again.

Ours only it is to admire Hancock's Dolly as we see her in her