Later, as clinton's troops were heading up the hudson valley, clinton used another device to pass the news of his whereabouts to burgoyne. clinton wrote a message on a piece of silk that he put in a silver ball about the size of a musket ball. (clinton also sometimes cut a message into long, narrow strips and coiled them into the hollow quill of a large feather.) clinton gave the silver ball to daniel taylor, a young officer, promising that taylor would be promoted if he got the message to burgoyne. if he were captured, he was to swallow the ball. because it was made of silver, it could not harm him. the author’s main purpose in this excerpt is to persuade the reader that a spy named daniel taylor is a hero. entertain the reader with a humorous story about a young officer. prove that spying was the only way for the americans to win the war. give an example of creative spying during the american revolution.

Match the definition to the word for a better understanding of the paragraph. 1 money does not buy happiness or security. 2john ringling, one of the five brothers of the ringling brothers circus, started out in 1884 with a trained horse and a performing bear. 3for over forty years, he worked hard at the family enterprise, bought up smaller circuses, and imported new acts. 4in the 1920s, he was rated as one of the world's wealthiest men and owned every sizable circus in the country. 5over 5,000 people were on his payroll, and over 240 railroad cars were in his retinue each time the circus moved. 6at the time of his death, however, he was a nervous, unhappy man; he was also bankrupt and beset by lawsuits. 7his carefully built circus empire passed into alien hands. 8all those years of work had turned to dust. 1. business organization alien 2. group beset 3. without funds to pay debts retinue 4. troubled or harassed enterprise 5. strange; belonging to another person, place, country, or thing bankrupt