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George N. Briggs, who alluded, in eloquent terms, to his long and distinguished public services. Mr. Adams, in reply, spoke of the scenes amidst which he had passed his early youth, and of the influence which they exerted in forming his character and shaping his purposes. "In 1775," said he, "the minute men from a hundred towns in the province were marching, at a moment's warning, to the scene of opening war. Many of them called at my father's house in Quincy, and received the hospitality of John Adams. All were lodged in the house which the house would contain; others in the barns, and wherever they could find a place. There were then in my father's kitchen some dozen or two of pewter spoons; and I well recollect going into the kitchen and seeing some of the men engaged in running those spoons into bullets for the use of the troops! Do you wonder," said he, “that a boy of seven years of age, who witnessed this scene, should be a patriot ?"

In the fall of the same year, Mr. Adams received an invitation from the Cincinnati Astronomical Society, to visit that city, and assist in the ceremony of laying the corner stone of an observatory, to be erected on an eminence called Mount Ida. The invitation was accepted. On his journey to Cincinnati, the same demonstrations of respect, the same eagerness to honor the aged patriarch were manifested in the various cities and towns through which he passed, as on his summer tour.

The ceremony of laying the corner stone took place on the 9th of November, 1843. Mr. Adams delivered an address on the occasion, replete with eloquence, wisdom, philosophy, and religion. The following beautiful extract will afford a specimen :—

“The various difficult, and, in many respects, opposite motives which have impelled mankind to the study of the stars, have had a singular effect in complicating and confounding the recommendation. of the science. Religion, idolatry, superstition, curiosity, the thirst for knowledge, the passion for penetrating the secrets of nature, the warfare of the huntsman by night and by day against the beast of the forest and of the field, the meditations of the shepherd in the custody and wanderings of his flocks, the influence of the revolving seasons of the year, and the successive garniture of the firmament upon the labors of the husbandman, upon the seed time and the harvest, the blooming of flowers, the ripening of the vintage, the polar pilot of the navigator, and the mysterious magnet of the mariner-all, in harmonious action, stimulate the child of earth and of heaven to interrogate the dazzling splendors of the sky, to reveal to him the laws of their own existence.

"He has his own comforts, his own happiness, his own existence, identified with theirs. He sees the Creator in creation, and calls upon creation to declare the glory of the Creator. When Pythagoras, the philosopher of the Grecian schools, conceived that more than earthly idea of the music of the spheres'—when the great dramatist of nature could inspire the lips of his lover on the moonlight green with the beloved of his soul, to say to her :—

'Sit, Jessica. Look how the floor of Heaven

Is thick inlaid with pattens of bright gold!

There's not the smallest orb which thou beholdest,

But in his motion like an angel sings,

Still choiring to the young eyed cherubim!'

"Oh, who is the one with a heart, but almost wishes to cast off this muddy vesture of decay, to be admitted to the joy of listening to the celestial harmony !”

CHAPTER XV.

MR. ADAMS'

LAST APPEARANCE IN PUBLIC AT BOSTON-HIS
ON HIS JOURNEY TO WASHINGTON-

HEALTH-LECTURES

REMOTE CAUSE OF HIS DECEASE-STRUCK WITH PARALYSIS -LEAVES QUINCY FOR WASHINGTON FOR THE LAST TIMEHIS FINAL SICKNESS IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES— HIS DEATH-THE FUNERAL AT WASHINGTON-REMOVAL OF THE BODY TO QUINCY-ITS INTERMENT.

THE last time Mr. Adams appeared in public in Boston, he presided at a meeting of the citizens of that city, in Faneuil Hall. "A man had been kidnapped in Boston-kidnapped at noon-day, 'on the high road between Faneuil Hall and old Quincy,' and carried off to be a slave! New England hands had seized their brother, sold him into bondage forever, and his children after him. A meeting was called to talk the matter over, in a plain way, and look in one another's faces. Who was fit to preside in such a case? That old man sat in the chair in Faneuil Hall. Above him was the image of his father and his own; around him were Hancock and the other Adams, and Washington, greatest of all. Before him were the men and women of Boston, met to consider the wrongs done to a miserable negro slave. The roof of the old Cradle of Liberty

spanned over them all. Forty years before, a young man and a Senator, he had taken the chair at a meeting called to consult on the wrong done to American seamen, violently impressed by the British from an American ship of war-the unlucky Chesapeake. Now an old man, clothed with half a century of honors, he sits in the same Hall, to preside over a meeting to consider the outrage done to a single slave. One was the first meeting of citizens he ever presided over; the other was the last: both for the same object-the defence of the eternal right !"*

Few men retain the health and vigor with which Mr. Adams was blessed in extreme old age. When most others are decrepit and helpless, he was in the enjoyment of meridian strength and energy, both of body and mind, and could endure labors which would prostrate many in the prime of manhood. An instance of his powers of endurance is furnished in his journey to Washington, to attend the opening of Congress, when in the 74th year of his age. On Monday morning he left Boston, and the same evening delivered a lecture before the Young Men's Institute, in Hartford, Conn. The next day he proceeded to New Haven, and in the evening lectured before a similar Institute in that city. Wednesday he pursued his journey to New York, and in the evening lectured before the New York Lyceum, in the Broadway Tabernacle. Thursday evening he

*Theodore Parker.

delivered an address before an association in Brooklyn; and on Friday evening delivered a second lecture before the New York Lyceum. Here were labors which would seriously tax the constitution of vigorous youth; and yet Mr. Adams performed them with much comparative ease.

His great longevity, and his general good health, must be attributed, in no small degree, to his abstemious and temperate habits, early rising, and active exercise. He took pleasure in athletic amusements, and was exceedingly fond of walking. During his summer residence in Quincy, he has been known to walk to his son's residence in Boston (seven miles,) before breakfast. "While President of the United States, he was probably the first man up in Washington, lighted his own fire, and was hard at work in his library, while sleep yet held in its obliviousness the great mass of his fellow-citizens." He was an expert swimmer, and was in the constant habit of bathing, whenever circumstances would permit. Not unfrequently the first beams of the rising sun, as they fell upon the beautiful Potomac, would find Mr. Adams buffeting its waves with all the sportiveness and dexterity of boyhood, while a single attendant watched upon the shore. When in the Presidency, he sometimes made a journey from Washington to Quincy on horseback, as a simple citizen, accompanied only by a servant.

More than four score years had sprinkled their

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