QUINCY, _12 July, 1801_.
"MY DEAR SON:
"I am much delighted to learn that you intend making a visit to the old
mansion. I wish you could have accomplished it so as to have been here
by this time, which would have given you an opportunity of being at
Commencement, meeting many of your old acquaintances, and visiting the
seat of science, where you received your first rudiments.
"I shall look daily for you. You will find your father in the fields,
attending to his haymakers, and your mother busily occupied in the
domestic concerns of her family. I regret that a fortnight of sharp
drought has shorn many of the beauties we had in rich luxuriance. The
verdure of the grass has become a brown, the flowers hang their heads,
droop, and fade, whilst the vegetable world languishes; yet still we
have a pure air. The crops of hay have been abundant; upon this spot,
where eight years ago we cut scarcely six tons, we now have thirty. 'We
are here, among the vast and noble scenes of nature, where we walk in
the light and open ways of the divine bounty, and where our senses are
feasted with the clear and genuine taste of their objects.' * * * * *
"I am, my dear Thomas, affectionately, your mother,
"ABIGAIL ADAMS."
Mrs. Adams died at Quincy on the 28th of October, 1818, aged seventy-four
years.
John Adams died at the good age of ninety-one years, on the 4th of July,
1826. We thank God, as he did, that a life spent in the service of his
country should close without pain and in perfect tranquillity of soul,
on the anniversary of the best day in her history, and a day with which
his name is for ever associated in our gratefullest memories.