Winter was hurrying on; during the day family af fairs took off her attention, but her long evenings, broken by the sound of the storm on the ocean, or the enemy's artillery at Boston, were lonesome and melancholy. Ever in the silent night ruminating on the love and tenderness of her departed parent, she needed the consolation of her husband's presence; but when she read the king's proclamation, she willingly gave up her nearest friend exclusively to his perilous duties, and sent him her cheering message: "This intelligence will make a plain path for you, though a dangerous one. I could not join to-day in the petitions of our worty pastor for a reconciliation between our no longer parent state, but tyrant state and these colonies. Let us separate; they are unworthy to be our brethren. Let us renounce them; and instead of supplications, as formerly, for their prosperity and happiness, let us beseech the Almighty to blast their counsels and bring to naught all their devices."

Such words of patriotism falling from the lips of a woman who had just buried three members of her household, one her own mother, and who was alone with her four little children within sight of the cannonading at Boston, discovers a mind strong, and a spirit fearless and brave under scenes of harrowing distress.

Now she was alone, and she writes to her husband, "the desolation of war is not so distressing as the havoc made by the pestilence. Some poor parents are mourning the loss of three, four, and five children, and some families are wholly stripped of every mem

ber." December found Mr. Adams once more at home to cheer his suffering family, but Congress demanded his presence, and after a stay of one month, he returned again to the halls of the nation. March came, and her anxious solitary life was in no wise brightened. The distance, in those days of slow travel and bad roads, from Boston to Philadelphia was immense, and letters were precious articles hard to receive. In speaking of the anticipated attack on Boston, she says: "It has been said to-morrow and to-morrow; but when the dreadful to-morrow will be I know not.” Yet even as she wrote, the first peal of the American guns rang out their dissonance on the chilling night winds, and the house shook and trembled from cellar to garret. It was no time for calm thoughts now, and she left her letter unfinished to go out and watch the lurid lights that flashed and disappeared in the distance. Next morning she walked to Penn's Hill, where she sat listening to the amazing roar, and watching the British shells as they fell round about the camps of her friends. Her home at the foot of the hill was all her earthly wealth, and the careful husbanding of each years' crop her only income; yet while she ever and anon cast her eye upon it, the thoughts that welled into words were not of selfish repinings, but of proud expressions of high-souled patriotism. "The cannonade is from our army," she continues, "and the sight is one of the grandest in nature, and is of the true species of the sublime. Tis now an incessant roar. To-night we shall realize a more terrible scene still; I wish myself with you out of hearing, as

I ancnot assist them, but I hope to give you joy of Boston, even if it is in ruins before I send this away. But events were not ordered as she feared, and the result was more glorious than she dared hope. All the summer the army lay encamped around Boston, and in early Fall her husband came home again, after an absence of nearly a year. Yet his coming brought her no joy, since it was to announce the sad truth that he had been chosen to go to France. Could he take his wife and little ones, was the oft-recurring question. A small and not very good vessel had been ordered to take him, the British fleet knew this, and were on the watch to capture it. On every account it was deemed best he should go alone, but concluded to take his eldest son, John Quincy Adams, to bear him company, and in February, 1778, sailed for Europe.

The loneliness of the faithful wife can hardly be understood by those unacquainted with the horrors of war. Yet I ween there are many, very many, who in the dark gloom of the past strife can record similar feelings of agony, and can trace a parallel in the solitary musings of this brave matron. The ordinary occupations of the female sex have ever confined them. to a very limited sphere, and there is seldom an occasion when they can with propriety extend their exertions beyond the domestic hearth. "Only through the imagination can she give unlimited scope to those powers which the world until recently has never understood, and which are even now but dimly defined." Had mankind given her the privileges of a. liberal education, and freedom to carve her own des

tiny, to what dazzling heights would a mind so naturally gifted as Mrs. Adams have attained? Circumscribed as her lot was, she has left upon the pages of history an enviable record, and while Americans forget not to do honor to her husband's zeal and greatness, her memory lends a richer perfume, and sheds a radiance round the incidents of a life upon which she wielded so beneficial an influence.

Ofttimes weather-bound and compelled to remain indoors for days, with no society save her children and domestics, it is not strange that she should be lonely. Nor could her mind dwell upon any pleasing anticipations for the future. Her husband three thousand miles away, a hostile army encompassing the country, poor and forlorn, she yet so managed and controlled her little estate, that it served to support her, and in old age, to prove the happy asylum of her honored family. Mr. Adams knew her exposed condition, yet trusted to her judgment to protect herself and little ones. On a former occasion he had written to her "in case of danger to fly to the woods," and now he could only reiterate the same advice, at the same time feeling that she was strong and resolute to sustain herself. Six months passed, and Mrs. Adams writes to him, "I have never received a syllable from you or my dear son, and it is five months since I had an opportunity of conveying a line to you. ** Yet I know not but you are less a sufferer than you would be to hear from us, to know our distresses, and yet be unable to relieve them. The universal cry for bread to a hu mane heart is painful beyond description." Mr. Adams

returned to his family after an absence of eighteen months, but no sooner was he established in his happy home, than he was ordered to Great Britain to negotiate a peace. Two of his sons accompanied him on this trip. He went over night to Boston to embark early next day, and the sad heart left behind again, found relief in the following touching words: "My habitation, how disconsolate it looks! my table, I sit down to it, but cannot swallow my food! Oh, why was I born with so much sensibility, and why possessing it have I so often been called to struggle with it? Were I sure you would not be gone, I could not withstand the temptation of coming to town though my heart would suffer over again the cruel torture of separation." Soon after this time, she wrote to her eldest son in regard to his extreme reluctance at again crossing the ocean, and for its perspicuity and terseness, for the loftiness of its sentiments, and the sound logical advice in which it abounds, ranks itself among the first literary effusions of the century:

"JUNE, 1778.

"MY DEAR SON: Tis almost four months since you left your native land and embarked udon 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 years, going to a distant land; nor could I have ac

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