history. To read the biographies of
Quincy's great men would comprise a studious winter's employment, but
we, passing through the historic city, may hold up our fragment of a
mirror and catch a bit of the procession.

First and foremost, of course, will come President John Adams, he who,
both before and after his term of high office, toiled terrifically in
the public cause, being at the time of his election to Congress a member
of ninety committees and a chairman of twenty-five! We see him as the
portraits have taught us to see him, with strong, serious
face,--austere, but not harsh,--velvet coat, white ruffles, and white
curls. He stands before us as the undisputed founder of what is now
recognized as American diplomacy. Straightforward, sound to the core,
unswerving, veracious, exemplifying in every act the candor of the
Puritan, so congruous with the new simple life of a nation of common
people. I think we shall like best to study him as he stands at the door
of the little house in which he was born, and which, with its pitch
roof, its antique door and eaves, is still preserved, close to the
street, for public scrutiny.

Next to President John Adams comes his son, John Quincy Adams, also a
President of the United States. Spending much of his time abroad, the
experience of those diplomatic years is graven upon features more subtly
refined than those of his sire. But for all his foreign residence, he
was, like his father, a Puritan in its most exalted sense; like him
toiled all his life in public service, dying in the harness when rising
to address the Speaker of the House. Him, too, we see best, standing at
the door of his birthplace, a small cottage a stone's throw from the
other cottage, separated only by a turnstile. Fresh white curtains hang
in the small-paned windows; the grass is neatly trimmed, and like its
quaint companion it is now open to the public and worth the tourist's
call. Both these venerable cottages have inner walls, one of burnt, the
other of unburnt brick; and both are unusual in having no boards on the
outer walls, but merely clapboards fastened directly on to the studding
with wrought-iron nails.

Still another Adams follows, Charles Francis Adams. Although a little
boy when he first comes into public view, a little boy occupying the
conspicuous place as child of one President and grandchild of another,
yet he was to win renown and honor on his own account as Ambassador to
England during the