40. In the debate which ensued upon this royal order, Otis said:
"We are asked to rescind, are we? Let Great Britain rescind her
measures, or the colonies are lost to her forever."

41. Otis carried the House triumphantly with him, and it refused
to rescind by a vote of ninety-two to seventeen.

42. In the summer of 1769 he attacked some of the revenue
officers in an article in "The Boston Gazette." A few evenings
afterwards, while sitting in the British coffee-house in Boston,
he was savagely assaulted by a man named Robinson, who struck him
on the head with a heavy cane or sword.

43. The severe wound which was produced so greatly aggravated the
mental disease which had before been somewhat apparent, that his
reason rapidly forsook him.

44. Otis obtained a judgment of L2,000 against Robinson for the
attack, but when the penitent officer made a written apology for
his irreparable offense, the sufferer refused to take a penny.

45. In 1771 he was elected to the legislature, and sometimes
afterward appeared in court and in the town meeting, but found
himself unable to take part in public business.

46. In June, 1775, while living in a state of harmless insanity
with his sister, Mercy Warren, at Watertown, Mass., he heard,
according to Appleton's "Cyclopedia of American Biography," the
rumor of battle. On the 17th he slipped away unobserved,