home life in colonial days was no
one-sided affair. The father and the mother were on a par in matters of
child training, and the influence of both entered into that strong race
of men who, through long years of struggle and warfare, wrested
civilization from savagery, and a new nation from an old one. What a
modern writer has written about Mrs. Adams might possibly be applicable
to many a colonial mother who kept no record of her daily effort to lead
her children in the path of righteousness and noble service: "Mrs.
Adams's influence on her children was strong, inspiring, vital.
Something of the Spartan mother's spirit breathed in her. She taught her
sons and daughter to be brave and patient, in spite of danger and
privation. She made them feel no terror at the thought of death or
hardships suffered for one's country. She read and talked to them of the
world's history.... Every night, when the Lord's prayer had been
repeated, she heard him [John Quincey] say the ode of Collins beginning,

'How sleep the brave who sink to rest
By all their country's wishes blest.'"[99]

_IX. Tributes to Colonial Mothers_

With such wives and mothers so common in the New World, it is but
natural that many a high tribute to them should be found in the old
records. Not for any particular or exactly named trait are these women
praised, but rather for that general, indescribable quality of
womanliness--that quality which men have ever praised and ever will
praise. Those noble words of Judge Sewall at the open grave of his
mother are an epitome of the patience, the love, the sacrifice, and the
nobility of motherhood: "Jany. 4th, 1700-1.... Nathan Bricket taking in
hand to fill the grave, I said, Forbear a little, and suffer me to say
that amidst our bereaving sorrows we have the comfort of beholding this
saint put into the rightful possession of that happiness of living
desir'd and dying lamented. She liv'd commendably four and fifty years
with her dear husband, and my dear father: and she could not well brook
the being divided from him at her death; which is the cause of our
taking leave of her in this place. She was a true and constant lover of
God's Word, worship and saints: and she always with a patient
cheerfulness, submitted to the divine decree of providing bread for her
self and others in the sweat of her brows. And now ... my honored and
beloved Friends and Neighbors! My dear mother never thought much of
doing the most f