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Page 51
"Father, dear father, make haste!" shrieked his children.
But Hutchinson would not hearken to them. He was an old lawyer; and he
could not realize that the people would do any thing so utterly lawless
as to assault him in his peaceful home. He was one of King George's
chief officers; and it would be an insult and outrage upon the king
himself, if the lieutenant-governor should suffer any wrong.
"Have no fears on my account," said he; "I am perfectly safe. The king's
name shall be my protection."
Yet he bade his family retire into one of the neighboring houses. His
daughter would have remained, but he forced her away.
The huzzas and riotous uproar of the mob were now heard, close at hand.
The sound was terrible, and struck Hutchinson with the same sort of
dread as if an enraged wild beast had broken loose, and were roaring
for its prey. He crept softly to the window. There he beheld an immense
concourse of people, filling all the street, and rolling onward to his
house. It was like a tempestuous flood, that had swelled beyond its
bounds, and would sweep every thing before it. Hutchinson trembled; he
felt, at that moment, that the wrath of the people was a thousand-fold
more terrible than the wrath of a king.
That was a moment when a loyalist and an aristocrat, like Hutchinson,
might have learned how powerless are kings, nobles, and great men, when
the low and humble range themselves against them. King George could do
nothing for his servant now. Had King George been there, he could have
done nothing for himself. If Hutchinson had understood this lesson, and
remembered it, he need not, in after years, have been an exile from his
native country, nor finally have laid his bones in a distant land.
There was now a rush against the doors of the house. The people sent up
a hoarse cry. At this instant, the lieutenant-governor's daughter, whom
he had supposed to be in a place of safety, ran into the room, and threw
her arms around him. She had returned by a private entrance.
"Father, are you mad!" cried she. "Will the king's name protect you now?
Come with me, or they will have your life."
"True," muttered Hutchinson to himself; "what care these roarers for the
name of king? I must flee, or they will trample me down, on the door of
my own dwelling!"
Hurrying away, he and his daughter made their escape by the private
passage, at the moment when the rioters broke into the house. The
foremost of them rushed up the stair-case, and entered the room which
Hutchinson had just quitted. There they beheld our good old chair,
facing them with quiet dignity, while the lion's head seemed to move its
jaws in the unsteady light of their torches. Perhaps the stately aspect
of our venerable friend, which had stood firm through a century and a
half of trouble, arrested them for an instant. But they were thrust
forward by those behind, and the chair lay overthrown.
Then began the work of destruction. The carved and polished mahogany
tables were shattered with heavy clubs, and hewn to splinters with axes.
The marble hearths and mantel pieces were broken. The volumes of
Hutchinson's library, so precious to a studious man, were torn out of
their covers, and the leaves sent flying out of the windows.
Manuscripts, containing secrets of our country's history, which are now
lost forever, were scattered to the winds.
The old ancestral portraits, whose fixed countenances looked down on the
wild scene, were rent from the walls. The mob triumphed in their
downfall and destruction, as if these pictures of Hutchinson's
forefathers had committed the same offences as their descendant. A tall
looking-glass, which had hitherto presented a reflection of the enraged
and drunken multitude, was now smashed into a thousand fragments. We
gladly dismiss the scene from the mirror of our fancy.
Before morning dawned, the walls of the house were all that remained.
The interior was a dismal scene of ruin. A shower pattered in at the
broken windows, and when Hutchinson and his family returned, they stood
shivering in the same room, where the last evening had seen them so
peaceful and happy.
* * * * *
"Grandfather," said Laurence indignantly, "if the people acted in this
manner, they were not worthy of even so much liberty as the king of
England was willing to allow them."
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