"The sun is dressed in brightest beams,
To give thy honors to the day."
"And may it prove an auspicious prelude to each ensuing season.
You have this day to declare yourself head of a Nation. And now,
O Lord, my God, Thou hast made Thy servant ruler over the people.
Give unto him an understanding heart, that he may know how to go
out and come in before this great people; that he may discern
between good and bad. For who is able to judge this Thy so great
a people, were the words of a royal Sovereign; and not less
applicable to him who is invested with the Chief Magistracy of a
nation, though he wear not a crown, nor the robes of royalty.
"My thoughts and my meditations are with you, though personally
absent; and my petitions to Heaven are that the things which make
for peace may not be hidden from your eyes. My feelings are not
those of pride or ostentation upon the occasion.
"They are solemnized by a sense of the obligations, the important
trusts, and numerous duties connected with it. That you may be
enabled to discharge them with honor to yourself, with justice
and impartiality to your country, and with satisfaction to this
great people, shall be the daily prayer of your
"A.A."
It was in this room that Abigail waited while British soldiers ransacked
the rooms below and made bullets of the best pewter spoons. Here her son
who was to be President was born.
John Quincy Adams was six years old when his father kissed him good-by and
rode away for Philadelphia with John Hancock and Samuel Adams (who rode a
horse loaned him by John Adams). Abigail stood in the doorway holding the
baby, and watched them disappear in the curve of the road. This was in
August, Seventeen Hundred Seventy-four. Most of the rest of that year
Abigail was alone with her babies on the little farm. It was the same next
year, and in Seventeen Hundred Seventy-six, too, when John Adams wrote
home that he had made the formal move for Independency and also nominated
George Washington as Commander-in-Chief of the army; and he hoped things
would soon be better.
Those were troublous times in which to live in the vicinity of Boston.
There were straggling troops passing up and down the Plymouth road every
day. Sometimes they were redcoats and sometimes buff and blue, but all
seemed to be very hungry and extremely thirsty, and the Adams household
received a great deal more attention than it courted. The master of the
house was away, but all seemed to know who lived there, and the callers
were not always courteous.
In such a feverish atmosphere of unrest, children evolve quickly into men
and women, and their faces take on the look of thought where should be
only careless, happy, dimpled smiles. Yes, responsibility matures, and
that is the way John Quincy Adams got cheated out of his childhood.
When eight years of age, his mother called him the little man of the
house. The next year he was a post-rider, making a daily trip to Boston
with letter-bags across his saddlebows.
When eleven years of age, his father came home to say that some one had to
go to France to serve with Jay and Franklin in making a treaty.
"Go," said Abigail, "and God be with you!" But when it was suggested that
John Quincy go, too, the parting did not seem so easy. But it was a fine
opportunity for the boy to see the world of men, and the mother's head
appreciated it even if her heart did not. And yet she had the heroism that
is willing to remain behind.
So father and son sailed away; and little John Quincy added postscripts to
his father's letters and said, "I send my loving duty to my mamma."
The boy took kindly to foreign ways, as boys will, and the French language
had no such terrors for him as it had for his father. The first stay in
Europe was only three months, and back they came on a leaky ship.
But the home-stay was even shorter than the stay abroad, and John Adams
had again to cross the water on his country's business. Again the boy went
with him.
It was five years before the mother saw him. And then he had gone on alone
from Paris to London to meet her. She did not know him, for he was nearly
eighteen and a man grown. He had visited every country in Europe and been
the helper and companion of statesmen and courtiers, and seen society in
its various phases. He spoke several languages, and in point of polish and
manly dignity was the peer of many of his elders. Mrs. Adams looked at him
and then began to cry, whether for joy or for sorrow she did not know. Her
boy had gone, escaped her, gone forever, but, instead, here was a tall
young diplomat calling her "mother."
There was a career ahead for John Quincy Adams--his father knew it, his
mother was sure of it, and John Quincy himself was not in doubt. He could
then have gone right on, but his father was a Harvard man, and the New
England superstition was strong in the Adams heart that success could only
be achieved when based on a Harvard parchment.
So back to Massachusetts sailed John Quincy; and a two-year course at
Harvard secured the much-desired diploma.
From the very time he crawled over this kitchen-floor and pushed a chair,
learning to walk, or tumbled down the stairs and then made his way bravely
up again alone, he knew that he would arrive. Precocious, proud, firm, and
with a coldness in his nature that was not a heritage from either his
father or his mother, he made his way.
It was a zigzag course, and the way was strewn with the flotsam and jetsam
of wrecked parties and blighted hopes, but out of the wreckage John Quincy
Adams always appeared, calm, poised and serene. When he opposed the
purchase of Louisiana it looks as if he allowed his animosity for
Jefferson to put his judgment in chancery. He made mistakes, but this was
the only blunder of his career. The record of that life expressed in bold
stands thus:
1767--Born May Eleventh.
1776--Post-rider between Boston and Quincy.
1778---At school in Paris.
1780--At school in Leyden.
1781--Private Secretary to Minister to Russia.
1787---Graduated at Harvard.
1794--Minister at The Hague.
1797--Married Louise Catherine Johnson, of Maryland.
1797--Minister at Berlin.
1802--Member of Massachusetts State Senate.
1803--United States Senator.
1806--Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory at Harvard
1809--Minister to Russia.
1811--Nominated and confirmed by Senate as Judge of Supreme Court
of the United States; declined.
1814--Commissioner at Ghent to treat for peace with Great Britain.
1815--Minister to Great Britain.
1817--Secretary of State.
1825--Elected President of the United States.
1830--Elected a Member of Congress, and represented the district
for seventeen years.
1848--Stricken with paralysis February Twenty-first in the
Capitol, and died the second day after.
* * * * *
"Aren't we staying in this room a good while?" said June; "you have sat
there staring out of that window looking at nothing for just ten minutes,
and not a word have you spoken!"
Mr. Spear had disappeared into space, and so we made our way across the
little hall to the room that belonged to Mr. Adams. It was in the disorder
that men's rooms are apt to be. On the table were quill-pens and curious
old papers with seals on them, and on one I saw the date, June Sixteenth,
Seventeen Hundred Sixty-eight--the whole document written out in the hand
of John Adams, beginning very prim and careful, then moving off into a
hurried scrawl as spirit mastered the letter. There is a little
hair-covered trunk in the corner, studded with brass nails, and boots and
leggings and canes and a jackknife and a bootjack, and, on the
window-sill, a friendly snuffbox. In the clothespress were buff trousers
and an embroidered coat, and shoes with silver buckles, and several suits
of every-day clothes, showing wear and patches.
On up to the garret we groped, and bumped our heads against the rafters.
The light was dim, but we could make out more apples on strings, and roots
and herbs in bunches hung from the peak. Here was a three-legged chair and
a broken spinning-wheel, and the junk that is too valuable to throw away,
yet not good enough to keep, but "some day may be needed."
Down the narrow stairway we went, and in the little kitchen, Sammy, the
artist, and Mr. Spear, the custodian, were busy at the fireplace preparing
dinner. There is no stove in the house, and none is needed. The crane and
brick oven and long-handled skillets suffice. Sammy is an expert
camp-cook, and swears there is death in the chafing-dish, and grows
profane if you mention one. His skill in turning flapjacks by a simple
manipulation of the long-handled griddle means more to his true ego than
the finest canvas.
June offered to set the table, but Sammy said she could never do it alone,
so together they brought out the blue china dishes and the pewter plates.
Then they drew water at the stone-curbed well with the great sweep,
carrying the leather-baled bucket between them.