them up for usefulness. These duties she discharged with the utmost assiduity and faithfulness, in spite of the many social obligations which a woman in her position must necessarily encounter.[1] Nor did the demands of courtesy and of her family debar her from habitual and systematic charities, dispensed in her neighborhood, or from those most important of all daily duties, the calls of the "closet." In the language of Miss Conkling, in her Memoir: "It is recorded of this devout Christian, that never during her life, whether in prosperity or in adversity, did she omit that daily self-communion and self-examination, and those private devotional exercises, which would best prepare her for the self-control and self-denial by which she was, for more than half a century, so eminently distinguished. It was her habit to retire to her own apartment every morning after breakfast, there to devote an hour to solitary prayer and meditation."
In 1770, she lost a child of many prayers, of bright hopes, and of much promise, her blooming daughter. She looked upon this affliction as a visitation from Him who doeth all things well, and bore it with becoming resignation, which the Christian only is prepared to do.
During the Revolution, Mrs. Washington was accustomed to pass the winters with her husband at the head quarters of the army and the summers at Mount Vernon; and it was in the camp that she shone with the lustre of the true woman. "She was at Valley Forge in that dreadful winter of 1777–8, her presence and submission to privation strengthening the fortitude of those who might have complained, and giving hope and confidence to the desponding. She soothed the distresses of many sufferers, seeking out the poor and afflicted with benevolent kindness, extending relief wherever it was in her power, and with graceful deportment presiding in the Chief's humble dwelling."[2]
In 1781, she lost her last surviving child, John Custis, aged twenty seven. Her widowed daughter-in-law and the four children, she took to her own home, and thenceforward they were the objects of her untiring solicitude.
The life of Mrs. Washington, after her husband took the Presidential chair, was marked by no striking incidents, and affords scanty material of the nature marked out for this work. During the eight years that he was Chief Magistrate, she presided in his mansion with the same unaffected ease, equanimity and dignified simplicity that had marked her previous course in more retired circles. Visitors were received on all days except the Sabbath, and, irrespective of rank, shared in her courtesies and hospitalities. A portion of each summer, at that period, was passed in the quiet and seclusion of Mount Vernon, she rarely, if ever, accompanying her husband on his tours through the land. She expressed regret when he was chosen President, because she preferred "to grow old" with him "in solitude and tranquillity;" hence it is not surprising that she found a luxury in retiring for a season from the scenes of public life, and in attending to the education of her grand-children and to other self-imposed tasks and important duties, in the performance of which she could bless her friends and honor God.
After the death of her illustrious companion, which occurred in December, 1799, she remained at Mount Vernon; where she spent seventeen months mourning her loss; receiving the visits of the great from all parts of our land, and from various parts of the earth; attending, as heretofore, to her domestic concerns; perfecting in the Christian graces, and ripening for the joys of a holier state of being. On the twenty-second of May, 1801, she who, while on earth, could be placed in no station which she did not dignify and honor, was welcomed to the glories of another world.
THE WIFE OF JOHN ADAMS.
The mother in her office holds the key
Of the soul; and she it is who stamps the coin
Of character, and makes the being who would be a savage,
But for her gentle cares, a Christian man.
Old Play.
——O we will walk this world,
Yoked in all exercise of noble aim.
Tennyson.
Abigail Smith was a daughter of the Rev. William Smith, a Congregational minister of Weymouth, Massachusetts, where she was born on the eleventh of November, 1744, O. S. "It was fashionable to ridicule female learning," in her day; and she says of herself in one of her letters, "I was never sent to any school." She adds, "I was always sick. Female education, in the best families, went no further than writing and arithmetic." But notwithstanding her educational disadvantages, she read and studied in private, and kept up a brisk correspondence with relatives, and by these means expanded and fed her mind, and cultivated an easy and graceful style of writing.
On the twenty-fifth of October, 1764, Miss Smith became the wife of John Adams, a lawyer of Braintree.[3]
Her grandson, Charles Francis Adams, to whose Memoir of her we are indebted for these statistics, says, that "the ten years immediately following, present little that is worth recording."
Prior to 1778, Mr. and Mrs. Adams had been separated at sundry times, in all, more than three years, which was a severe trial to her fortitude. The strength of her conjugal affection may be gathered from an extract from one of her letters: "I very well remember," she writes, "when the eastern circuits of the courts, which lasted a month, were thought an age, and an absence of three months, intolerable; but we are carried from step to step, and from one degree to another, to endure that which at first we think impossible." Thus she was schooled for separation from her husband, when, in 1778, he went to France as a joint commissioner. While he was absent from his country on that occasion, faithful to the calls of duty, she remained at home, and managed, as she had done before, the affairs of the household and farm. And there let the reader look at her and see a picture of a true mother of the Revolution. "She is a farmer cultivating the land, and discussing the weather and crops; a merchant reporting prices-current and the rates of exchange, and directing the making up of invoices; a politician, speculating upon the probabilities of peace or war; and a mother, writing the most exalted sentiments to her son."
What nobler deed could the mother, thus situated, do with her son, John Quincy Adams, in a foreign land, than to write to him in a tone like that of the extracts which follow, and which are taken from letters dated 1778–80:
"'Tis almost four months since you left your native land, and embarked upon the mighty waters, in quest of a foreign country. Although I have not particularly written to you since, yet you may be assured you have constantly been upon my heart and mind.
"It is a very difficult task, my dear son, for a tender parent to bring her mind to part with a child of your years going to a distant land; nor could I have acquiesced in such a separation under any other care than that of the most excellent parent and guardian who accompanied you. You have arrived at years capable of improving under the advantages you will be likely to have, if you do but properly attend to them. They are talents put into your hands, of which an account will be required of you hereafter; and being possessed of one, two, or four, see to it that you double your numbers.
"The most amiable and most useful disposition in a young mind is diffidence of itself; and this should lead you to seek advice and instruction from him, who is your natural guardian, and will always counsel and direct you in the best manner, both for your present and future happiness. You are in possession of a natural good understanding, and of spirits unbroken by adversity and untamed with care. Improve your understanding by acquiring useful knowledge and virtue, such as will render you an ornament to society, an honor to your country, and a blessing to your parents. Great learning and superior abilities, should you ever possess them, will be of little value and small estimation, unless
