MD3PAD 310-312

[Toby G Levy]

        Page 310 begins with a half dozen lines from another poem by
the apocryphal Timothy Tox entitled "The Siege of Philadelphia, or
Attila Turned Anew," in which the Paxton boys are confronted by Benjamin
Franklin.

        Mason is impatient to pin down the exact latitude of the
southernmost point of Philadelphia.  As soon as it is accomplished they
will be able to move to a new observatory constructed on the same
latitude somewhere to the west. Dixon hopes to be in town when the
Paxton boys arrive.  Mason hopes to avoid them, but Dixon thinks they
will have to run into them at some point.

        Dixon says as a Quaker he is offended by the violence, but as
one who remembers the Jacobite rebellion of 1745, he can understand
people who feel need for revenge.  Mason states that Dixon was a child
in 1745. In fact he was only 12 years old. Mason was 17 that year and
sympathetic to the Jacobites, who failed to restore the throne to the
Stuarts.

        They reminisce at length of their passions during the thrilling
events of the rebellion of 1745.

Toby