e of taxes, the most helpful methods of enlistment, Chesterfield's
Letters, the town elections, the higher education of women, and the
getting of homespun enough for Mr. Adams's new suit.

She manages, with astonishing skill, to keep the household in comfort.
She goes through trials of sickness, death, agonizing suspense, and ever
with the same heroic cheerfulness, that her anxious husband may be
spared the pangs which she endures. When he is sent to France and
Holland, she accepts the new parting as another service pledged to her
country. She sees her darling boy of ten go with his father, aware that
at the best she must bear months of silence, knowing that they may
perish at sea or fall into the hands of privateers; but she writes with
indomitable cheer, sending the lad tender letters of good advice, a
little didactic to modern taste, but throbbing with affection. "Dear as
you are to me," says this tender mother, "I would much rather you should
have found your grave in the ocean you have crossed than see you an
immoral, profligate, or graceless child."

It was the lot of this country parson's daughter to spend three years in
London as wife of the first American minister, to see her husband
Vice-President of the United States for eight years and President for
four, and to greet her son as the eminent Monroe's valued Secretary of
State, though she died, "seventy-four years young," before he became
President. She could not, in any station, be more truly a lady than when
she made soap and chopped kindling on her Braintree farm. At Braintree
she was no more simply modest than at the Court of St. James or in the
Executive Mansion. Her letters exactly reflect her ardent, sincere,
energetic nature. She shows a charming delight when her husband tells
her that his affairs could not possibly be better managed than she
manages them, and that she shines not less as a statesman than as a
farmeress. And though she was greatly admired and complimented, no
praise so pleased her as his declaration that for all the ingratitude,
calumnies, and misunderstandings that he had endured,--and they were
numberless,--her perfect comprehension of him had been his sufficient
compensation.

Lucia Gilbert Runkle

TO HER HUSBAND

BRAINTREE, May 24th, 1775.

_My Dearest Friend_:

Our house has been, upon this alarm, in the same scene of
confusion that it was upon the former. Soldiers coming in
for a lodging, for breakfast, for supper, for