| Citation |
EJMP.775.028
29 Mar 1775:24,31 (2/67)
Extract of a letter from a gentlemen in Connecticut,
February 17.
My last letter gave you an account of the disputes and
dissentions among us; but all is peace and union at present:
All parties seem sensible of the folly of their divisions, .
. . [4 lines]
Justice, however, obliges me to except from the above
account, some few persons of "the fearful and unbelieving
brood," whose imagination is filled with scare-crows, and
who dream much of hangings, confiscations, royal standards,
fleets, armies,
"Gun, drum, trumpet, blunderbus and thunder."
These people have somehow or other had a revelation that
all the Americans are cowards, and our enemies invincible.
From them we hear very terrible lamentations, with which
themselves at least are extremely afflicted. There have
been some prodigies seen among us, which have frighted some
of our superstitious people not a little. There was a noise
in the air heard about a fortnight ago, which did
considerable execution among old women; being, as they aver,
the second part of the same tune, which they remember to
have heard just before the last war. Several ball of fire,
meteors, and other such like apparatus have appeared to
proper persons in various parts of the country; particularly
one in the form of a drum, (whether a kettle drum or one of
the common trainband drums, I have not been able to
discover) which was seen to alight down somewhere in
Windsor, after beating a dead march through the air, while
it was falling. . . [24 lines] For my part I do not think
all the scarecrows, raw heads and bloody bones, which have
been lately dealt about so liberally by your news paper
scriblers in Boston, are anyway to be compared to the
visions of our old women in Connecticut. . .
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