Book contents
- Frontmatter
- CONTENTS
- Acknowledgements
- Dedication
- Prologue: Epistlers of the Revolution
- 1 Commencement of a Civil War
- 2 Melted Majesty
- 3 Barren as a Pitch-Pine Plain
- 4 Life of a Cabbage
- 5 Hurried through Life on Horseback
- 6 Touch and Go is a Good Pilot
- 7 War and Greet Brittain
- 8 Keeping the Belly and Back from Grumbling, and the Kitchen-Fire from Going Out
- 9 The Mysteries of Lucina
- 10 Patience and Flannel
- Epilogue: Let Passion be Restrain'd within thy Soul
- Notes
- Works Cited
- Index
8 - Keeping the Belly and Back from Grumbling, and the Kitchen-Fire from Going Out
- Frontmatter
- CONTENTS
- Acknowledgements
- Dedication
- Prologue: Epistlers of the Revolution
- 1 Commencement of a Civil War
- 2 Melted Majesty
- 3 Barren as a Pitch-Pine Plain
- 4 Life of a Cabbage
- 5 Hurried through Life on Horseback
- 6 Touch and Go is a Good Pilot
- 7 War and Greet Brittain
- 8 Keeping the Belly and Back from Grumbling, and the Kitchen-Fire from Going Out
- 9 The Mysteries of Lucina
- 10 Patience and Flannel
- Epilogue: Let Passion be Restrain'd within thy Soul
- Notes
- Works Cited
- Index
Summary
Dear Sir, – This is the coldest day we have yet had, and, as I have no disposition to stir abroad, I shall devote part of it to you; though, as you tell me sometimes, I am not a letter in debt, excepting indeed the short script in which you told me you had found the Commentaries of De la Vega.
The world outside seemed motionless, without life. The Cocheco was hard frozen; feet of snow covered the ground. Conifers drooped from the weight of the snow. Sunlight, such as it was, appeared perfunctory. Indoors, however, the crackling warmth of the fireplace bespoke life and movement, keeping time with the pen conjuring up ideas and images of time and place. Belknap, lonely for the companionship of a fellow ‘son of science’, spent the afternoon as best he could.
‘We hear a talk of peace: doubtless you know more about it, for the news is said to come from your quarter’. Even in the depth of winter rumour and report went forth unimpeded. Belknap knew only of local, rather than national or international, political affairs. He found it simultaneously frustrating and entertaining that the New Hampshire legislature imposed a ‘test oath’, requiring conformity to Protestantism, upon office-holders; he viewed it ‘as a species of persecution for conscience’ sake’.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Ebenezer Hazard, Jeremy Belknap and the American Revolution , pp. 137 - 168Publisher: Pickering & ChattoFirst published in: 2014