As a matter of course, under circumstances of perpetual alarm
and frequent peril, the duty of cultivating their fields, and gathering
their harvests, and working at their mechanical avocations, was
dangerous and difficult to the settlers. One instance will serve as an
illustration. At the garrison-house of Thomas Dustin, the husband
of the far-famed Mary Dustin (who, while a captive of the Indians,
and maddened by the murder of her infant child, killed and scalped,
wit the assistance of a young boy, the entire band of her captors,
ten in number), the business of brick-making was carried on. The
pits where the clay was found were only a few rods from the house;
yet no man ventured to bring the clay to the yard within the
inclosure, without the attendance of a file of soldiers. An anecdote
relating to this garrison has been handed down to the present time.
Among its inmates were two young cousins, Joseph and Mary
Whittaker; the latter a merry, handsome girl, relieving the tedium of
garrison-duty with her light-hearted mirthfulness and--
"Making a sunshine in that shady place."(1)
(1) "Her angel's face
As the great eye of heaven shyned bright
And made a sunshine in the shadie place;
Did never mortal eye behold such heavenly grace."
Spenser: *The Faerie Queene,* bk.
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