"Never!" roared Mr. Meredith. "I'll have no Committee
of Correspondence, nor Sons of Liberty, nor Town Meeting
telling me what I may do or not do at Greenwood, any more
than I let the ragtag and bobtail tell me what I was to buy in
'69. Till I say nay, tea is drunk at Greenwood," and the
squire's fist came down on the table with a bang.

"Folks say that Congress will shut up the ports," said the
young man.

"Ay. And British frigates will open 'em. The people are
mad, sir, Bedlam mad, with the idea of liberty, as they call it.
Liberty, indeed! when they try to say what a man shall do in
his own house; what he shall eat; what he shall wear. And
this Congress! We, A and B, elect C to say what the rest of
the alphabet shall do, under penalty of tar and feathers, burned
ricks, or--don't talk to me, sir, of a Congress. 'T is but an
attempt of the mobility to override the nobility of this land, sir.
Once again the plates rattled on the table from the squire's fist,
and it became evident that if Miss Meredith had a temper it
came by inheritance.

"Now, Lambert," interposed his wife, "stop banging the
table and getting hot about nothing. Remember how thee hadst
the colonies ruined in Stamp Act times, and again during the
Association, and it all went over, just as this will. Pour thy
father another tankard of small beer, Janice."

Clearly, what the Committee of Correspondence, and even
the approaching Congress could not do, Mrs. Meredith could,