myself, I cannot take counsel;
I mourn day and night like the fields.
I, thy servant, pray to thee.
Let thy heart take rest, let thy disposition be softened.

ABIGAIL ADAMS
(1744-1818)

BY LUCIA GILBERT RUNKLE

The Constitution of the State of Massachusetts, adopted in the year
1780, contains an article for the Encouragement of Literature, which, it
declares, should be fostered because its influence is "to countenance
and inculcate the principles of humanity and general benevolence, public
and private charity, industry and frugality, honesty and punctuality in
dealings, sincerity and good humor, and all social affections and
generous sentiments among the people." In these words, as in a mirror,
is reflected the Massachusetts of the eighteenth century, where
households like the Adamses', the Warrens', the Otises', made the
standard of citizenship. Six years before this remarkable document was
framed, Abigail Adams had written to her husband, then engaged in
nation-making in Philadelphia:--"I most sincerely wish that some more
liberal plan might be laid and executed for the benefit of the rising
generation, and that our new Constitution may be distinguished for
encouraging learning and virtue." And he, spending his days and nights
for his country, sacrificing his profession, giving up the hope of
wealth, writes her:--"I believe my children will think that I might as
well have labored a little, night and day, for their benefit. But I will
tell them that I studied and labored to procure a free constitution of
government for them to solace themselves under; and if they do not
prefer this to ample fortune, to ease and elegance, they are not my
children. They shall live upon thin diet, wear mean clothes, and work
hard with cheerful hearts and free spirits, or they may be the children
of the earth, or of no one, for me."

[Illustration: ABIGAIL ADAMS]

In old Weymouth, one of those quiet Massachusetts towns, half-hidden
among the umbrageous hills, where the meeting-house and the school-house
rose before the settlers' cabins were built, where the one elm-shaded
main street stretches its breadth between two lines of self-respecting,
isolated frame houses, each with its grassy dooryard, its lilac bushes,
its fresh-painted offices, its decorous wood-pile laid with
architectural balance and symmetry,--there, in the dignified parsonage,
on the 11th of November, 1744, was born to Parson William Smith and