t as usual. At half past one in the afternoon the Speaker was
rising to put a question, when he was suddenly interrupted by cries of
"Stop! Stop!--Mr. Adams!" Some gentlemen near Mr. Adams had thought
that he was striving to rise to address the Speaker, when in an
instant he fell over insensible. The members thronged around him in
great confusion. The House hastily adjourned. He was placed on a sofa
and removed first to the hall of the rotunda and then to the Speaker's
room. Medical men were in attendance but could be of no service in the
presence of death. The stern old fighter lay dying almost on the very
field of so many battles and in the very tracks in which he had (p. 308)
so often stood erect and unconquerable, taking and dealing so many
mighty blows. Late in the afternoon some inarticulate mutterings were
construed into the words, "Thank the officers of the House." Soon
again he said intelligibly, "This is the last of earth! I am content!"
It was his extreme utterance. He lay thereafter unconscious till the
evening of the 23d, when he passed quietly away.

He lies buried "under the portal of the church at Quincy" beside his
wife, who survived him four years, his father and his mother. The
memorial tablet inside the church bears upon it the words "Alteri
Saeculo,"--surely never more justly or appropriately applied to any man
than to John Quincy Adams, hardly abused and cruelly misappreciated in
his own day but whom subsequent generations already begin to honor as
one of the greatest of American statesmen, not only preeminent in
ability and acquirements, but even more to be honored for profound,
immutable honesty of purpose and broad, noble humanity of aims.

INDEX (p. 311)

ABOLITIONISTS, their part in anti-slavery movement, 244, 245;
urge Adams to extreme actions, 254.

Adams, Abigail, shows battle of Bunker Hill to her son, 2;
life near Boston during siege, 2, 3;
letter of J. Q. Adams to, on keeping journal, 5;
warns him against asking office from his father as President, 23;
his spirited reply, 23.

Adams, C. F., on beginning of Adams's diary, 6;
on Adams's statement of Monroe doctrine, 131.

Adams, John, influence of his career in Revolution upon his son, 2;
leaves family near Boston while attending Continental Congress, 2, 3;
letter of his son to, on reading, 3;
first mission to France, 4;
second one, 4;
ad