was still a quiet and natural growth the towns and made new purchases of lands from the indians a very memorable event took place in the colonies of by ic grandfather s chair and new haven formed a union for the purpose of assisting each other in difficulties and for mutual defence against their enemies they called themselves the united colonies of new england were they under a government like that of the united states inquired no replied grandfather the different colonies did not compose one nation together it was merely a among the it somewhat resembled the league of the which you remember in history but to return to our chair in it was highly honored for governor sat in it when he gave audience to an from the french governor of or a treaty of peace between and the french colony was then signed did england allow to make war and peace with foreign countries asked and the whole of new england was then almost independent of the mother country said grandfather there was now a civil war in england and the king a you may well suppose had his hands full at home and could pay but little attention to these remote colonies when the parliament got the power into their hands they likewise had enough to do in keeping down the thus new by ic s england like a young and hardy lad father and mother neglect it was left to take care of itself in king charles was then became protector of england and as he was a himself and had risen by the of the english he showed himself a loving and indulgent father to the colonies in america grandfather might have continued to talk in this dull manner nobody knows how long but suspecting that would find the subject rather dry he looked sideways at that little fellow and saw him give an involuntary whereupon grandfather proceeded with the history of the chair and related a very entertaining incident which will be found in the next chapter d by fi chapter vi according to the most records my dear children said grandfather the chair about this time had the misfortune to break its leg it was probably on account of this accident that it ceased to be the seat of the of for assuredly it would have been ominous of evil to the if the chair of state had upon three legs being therefore sold at � alas what a for a chair that had figured in such high company � our venerable friend was knocked down to a certain captain john this old gentleman on carefully examining the chair discovered that its broken leg might be with iron and made as serviceable as ever here is the very leg that was broken exclaimed throwing himself down on the floor to look at it and here are the iron how well it was mended when they had all sufficiently examined the broken leg grandfather told them a story about captain john and the pine tree shillings the captain john was the master of and all the money that was made there this was a new d by line of business for in the earlier days of the colony the current consisted of gold and silver money of england and spain these being scarce the people were often forced to their instead of selling them for instance if a man wanted to buy a coat he perhaps exchanged a bear skin for it if he wished for a barrel of he might purchase it with a pile of pine boards were used instead of the indians had a sort of money called which was made of and this strange sort of was likewise taken in payment of debts by the english bank bills had never been heard of there was not money enough of any kind in many parts of the country to pay the of the ministers so that they sometimes had to take of fish of corn or of wood instead of silver or gold as the people grew more numerous and their trade one with another increased the want of current money was still more sensibly felt to supply the demand the general court passed a law for establishing a of shillings and captain john was appointed to manufacture this money and was to have about one shilling out of every twenty to pay him for the trouble of making them by ic all the old silver in the colony was handed over to captain john the battered silver and i suppose and silver and broken and silver buttons of worn out coats and silver of swords that had figured at court � all such curious old articles were doubtless thrown into the melting pot together but by far the greater part of the silver consisted of from the mines of south america which the english � who were little better than � had taken from the and brought to all this old and new silver being melted down and the result was an immense amount of splendid shillings and each had the date on the one side and the figure of a pine tree on the other hence they were called pine tree shillings and for every twenty shillings that he you will remember captain john was entitled to put one shilling into his own pocket the soon began to suspect that the master would have the best of the bargain they offered him a large sum of money if he would but give up that twentieth shilling which he was continually dropping into his own pocket but captain declared himself perfectly satisfied with the shilling and well he might be for so diligently did he labor by ic s chair that in a few years his pockets his money bags land his strong box were overflowing with shillings this was probably the case when he came into possession of 