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worth; and bent his knee in awe before a mere handful of ashes, which but for the cold marble encompassing them, would be blown to the four winds of the earth. It was a strange sight to see that bright youthful form kneeling before the tomb of the "Father of his Country," and attesting his appreciation of the great spirit which more than any other wrested its broad domains from him. But a stronger link than mere possessions animated the feelings, and bound that royal scion to the Patriot's grave. "Love of Liberty" was the magic wand which kindled in the breast of the stranger adoration for the memory of the departed, and when he turned to leave that place of sacredness, eyes not always used to weeping, were moist with falling tears.

Stealthily the years go by, and we wist not they are passing, yet the muffled and hoarse voice of a century astounds us with its parting. The centennial birthdays have been celebrated; soon we approach the hundredth anniversary of victories won and independence achieved. If the glad, free spirits of the Chief and his companion are permitted to review their earthly pilgrimage, let it be a source of gratification to us to know they smile upon a Republic of peace. Their bodies we guard, while they crumbled away in the bosom of their birth-place, and as long as a son of America remains a freeman, it will be a well-spring of inspiration to feel that Virginia contains the Pater Patric and the woman immortalized by his love.

We have known changes as a nation, and there have been dreadful contentions in this beautiful land

of ours, but never will there come a time when over that tomb at Mount Vernon we will refuse to meet as brothers, and renew again our allegiance above the ashes of our Father, who was "first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen."

MRS. JOHN ADAMS.

ABIGAIL SMITH, the daughter of a New England Congregationalist minister, was born at Weymouth, in 1744. Her father was the settled pastor of that place for more than forty years, and her grandfather was also a minister of the same denomination in a neighboring town.

The younger years of her life were passed in the quiet seclusion of her grandfather's house; and under the instructions of her grandmother, she imbibed most of the lessons which were the most deeply impressed upon her mind. "I have not forgotten," she says in a letter to her own daughter, in the year 1795, "the excellent lessons which I received from my grandmother at a very early period of life; I frequently think they made a more durable impression upon my mind than those which I received from my own parents." This tribute is due to the memory of those virtues, the sweet remembrance of which will flourish, though she has long slept with her ancestors.

Separated from the young members of her own family, and never subjected to the ordinary school routine, her imaginative faculties bid fair to develop at the expense of her judgment, but the austere religion of her ancestors, and the daily example of strict compliance to forms, forbade the too great indulgence of fancy. "She had many relations both on the father's

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THE NEW YORK TUBLIC LIBRARY

ASTOR, LENOX

TILDEN FOUNDATION

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