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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
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