Illustrazioni di economia politica, volume 1 (di 9)

away. The savages had carried off their tools and their arms, burned their little furniture with the houses, and left them nothing but the clothes they wore, and the seed which was buried in the ground. Happily, but few lives were lost, for the attack had been so sudden, that little resistance had been attempted: but yet some were gone whose services could ill be spared, even if they had not attached their companions to them by having shared the same toils, or by their several good qualities. Williams, the carpenter, was found dead among the ashes in the saw-pit; and Humby had been slaughtered on the threshold of the new hut he was building on his little farm. Some of the children, too, had perished in the flames; but the loss of life was found to be much less than every one had supposed before the numbers were called over. The most general and eager inquiries were for the safety of Captain Adams, and of Mr. and Mrs. Stone and their child, who were all alive and unhurt. Mr. Stone was the best-educated man in the settlement, and was therefore much valued as a chaplain and teacher, as well as in his character of a practical farmer. His wife was an amiable, strong-minded woman, who assisted her husband in his labours abroad and at home. She was, by common consent, called the Lady of the settlement; but she refused the title; not because she was not really a lady, but because she thought there was no reason for such a distinction in a place where all were obliged to exert their own power for their own subsistence. She had one child, a girl of three years old. Mr. Adams was called Captain only because he, in a manner, took the direction of the affairs of the settlement.…