a Sunday at the Presbyterian church.

The year 1777 is the one in which the passions roused of the
breaking off of the American colonies from England, more by their
own weight than their own will, boiled up to shooting point, the
shooting being idealized to the English mind as suppression of
rebellion and maintenance of British dominion, and to the
American as defence of liberty, resistance to tyranny, and
selfsacrifice on the altar of the Rights of Man. Into the merits
of these idealizations it is not here necessary to inquire:
suffice it to say, without prejudice, that they have convinced
both Americans and English that the most high minded course for
them to pursue is to kill as many of one another as possible, and
that military operations to that end are in full swing, morally
supported by confident requests from the clergy of both sides for
the blessing of God on their arms.

Under such circumstances many other women besides this
disagreeable Mrs. Dudgeon find themselves sitting up all night
waiting for news. Like her, too, they fall asleep towards
morning at the risk of nodding themselves into the kitchen fire.
Mrs. Dudgeon sleeps with a shawl over her head, and her feet on a
broad fender of iron laths, the step of the domestic altar of the
fireplace, with its huge hobs and boiler, and its hinged arm
above the smoky mantel-shelf for roasting. The plain kitchen
table is opposite the fire, at her elbow, with a candle on it in
a tin sconce. Her chair, like all the others in the room, is
uncushioned and unpainted; but as it has a round railed back and
a seat conventionally moulded to the sitter's curves, it is
comparatively a chair of state. The room has three doors, one on