such spectacles will be still more frequently witnessed,

40. In the debate which ensued upon this royal order, Otis said: "We are asked to rescind, are we? Let Great Britain rescind her measures, or the colonies are lost to her forever."

41. Otis carried the House triumphantly with him, and it refused to rescind by a vote of ninety-two to seventeen.

42. In the summer of 1769 he attacked some of the revenue officers in an article in "The Boston Gazette." A few evenings afterwards, while sitting in the British coffee-house in Boston, he was savagely assaulted by a man named Robinson, who struck him on the head with a heavy cane or sword.

43. The severe wound which was produced so greatly aggravated the mental disease which had before been somewhat apparent, that his reason rapidly forsook him.

44. Otis obtained a judgment of L2,000 against Robinson for the attack, but when the penitent officer made a written apology for his irreparable offense, the sufferer refused to take a penny.

45. In 1771 he was elected to the legislature, and sometimes afterward appeared in court and in the town meeting, but found himself unable to take part in public business.

46. In June, 1775, while living in a state of harmless insanity with his sister, Mercy Warren, at Watertown, Mass., he heard, according to Appleton's "Cyclopedia of American Biography," the rumor of battle. On the 17th he slipped away unobserved, "borrowed a musket from some farmhouse by the roadside, and joined the minute men who were marching to the aid of the troops on Bunker Hill."

47. "He took an active part in that battle, and after it was over made his way home again after midnight."

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