October 24.÷Fourth Day. I feel in a most unsettled humour. I can neither read, work or give my attention one moment to anything. It is too true that Cornwallis is taken. Tilghman is just arrived with dispatches from Washington which confirm it. B.S. came here and showed us some papers; long conversations we often have on the melancholy situation of things.

October 25.÷Fifth Day. I suppose, dear Mammy, thee would not have imagined this house to be illuminated last night, but it was. A mob surrounded it, broke the shutters and the glass of the windows, and were coming in, none but forlorn women here. We for a time listened for their attacks in fear and trembling till, finding them grow more loud and violent, not knowing what to do, we ran into the yard. Warm Whigs of one side, and Hartley's of the other (who were treated even worse than we), rendered it impossible for us to escape that way. We had not been there many minutes before we were drove back by the sight of two men climbing the fence. We thought the mob were coming in thro' there, but it proved to be Coburn and Bob. Shewell, who called to us not to be frightened, and fixed lights up at the windows, which pacified the mob, and after three huzzas they moved off. A number of men came in afterwards to see us. French and J.B. nailed boards up at the broken panels, or it would not have been safe to have gone to bed. Coburn and Shewell were really very kind; had it not been for them I really believe the house would have been pulled down. Even the firm Uncle Fisher was obliged to submit to have his windows illuminated, for they had pickaxes and iron bars with which they had done considerable injury to his house, and would soon have demolished it had not some of the Hodges and other people got in back and acted as they pleased. All Uncle's sons were out, but Sammy, and if they had been at home it was in vain to oppose them. In short it was the most alarming scene I ever remember. For two hours we had the disagreeable noise of stones banging about, glass crashing, and the tumultuous voices of a large body of men, as they were a long time at the different houses in the neighborhood. At last they were victorious, and it was one general illumination throughout the town. As we had not the pleasure of seeing any of the gentleman in the house, nor the furniture cut up, and goods stolen, nor been beat, not pistols pointed at our breasts, we may count our sufferings slight compared to many others. Mr Gibbs was obliged to make his escape over a fence, and while his wife was endeavoring to shield him from the rage of one of the men, she received a violent bruise in the breast, and a blow in the face which made her nose bleed. Ben. Shoemaker was here this morning; tho' exceedingly threatened he says he came off with the loss of four panes of glass. Some Whig friends put candles in the windows which made his peace with the mob, and they retired. John Drinker has lost half the goods out of his shop and been beat by them; in short the sufferings of those they pleased to style Tories would fill a volume and shake the credulity of those who were not here on that memorable night, and to-day Philadelphia makes an uncommon appearance, which ought to cover the Whigs with eternal confusion. A neighbor of ours had the effrontery to tell Mrs. G. that he was sorry for her furniture, but not for her windows÷a ridiculous distinction that many of them make. J. Head has nothing left whole in his parlour. Uncle Penington lost a good deal of window-glass. Aunt Burge preserved hers thro' the care of some of her neighbors. . . . Was I not sure, my dearest Mother, that you would have very exaggerated accounts of this affair from others, and would probably be uneasy for the fate of our friends, I would be entirely silent about it, but as you will hear it from some one or another, not mentioning it will seem as if we had suffered exceedingly, and I hope I may depend on the safety of this opportunity.
      People did nothing to-day but condole and enquire into each others honourable losses. . . .

October 26.÷Sixth Day. . . . It seems universally agreed that Phyladelphia will no longer be that happy asylum for Quakers that it once was. Those joyful days when all was prosperity and peace are gone, never to return; and perhaps it is as necessary for our society to ask for terms as it was for Cornwallis.