ms of being a muddy thinker; you grant his premises
and you are bound to accept his conclusions. He leaves no loopholes for
escape.

The following words, used by Chatham, refer to documents in which Adams
took a prominent part in preparing: "When your Lordships look at the
papers transmitted us from America, when you consider their decency,
firmness and wisdom, you can not but respect their cause and wish to make
it your own. For myself, I must avow that, in all my reading--and I have
read Thucydides and have studied and admired the master statesmen of the
world--for solidity of reason, force of sagacity, and wisdom of
conclusion under a complication of difficult circumstances, no body of men
can stand in preference to the general Congress of Philadelphia. The
histories of Greece and Rome give us nothing like it, and all attempts to
impress servitude on such a mighty continental people must be in vain."

In the life of Adams there was no soft sentiment nor romantic vagaries.
"He is a Puritan in all the word implies, and the unbending fanatic of
independence," wrote Gage, and the description fits.

He was twice married. Our knowledge of his first wife is very slight, but
his second wife, Elizabeth Wells, daughter of an English merchant, was a
capable woman of brave good sense. She adopted her husband's political
views and with true womanly devotion let her old kinsmen slide; and during
the dark hours of the war bore deprivation without repining.

Adams' home life was simple to the verge of hardship. All through life he
was on the ragged edge financially, and in his latter years he was for the
first time relieved from pressing obligations by an afflicting event--the
death of his only son, who was a surgeon in Washington's army. The money
paid to the son by the Government for his services gave the father the
only financial competency he ever knew. Two daughters survived him, but
with him died the name.

John Adams survived Samuel for twenty-three years. He lived to see "the
great American experiment," as Mr. Ruskin has been pleased to call our
country, on a firm basis, constantly growing stronger and stronger. He
lived to realize that the sanguine prophecies made by Samuel were working
themselves out in very truth.

The grave of Samuel Adams is viewed by more people than that of any other
American patriot. In the old Granary Burying-Ground, in the very center of
Boston, on Tremont Street--there where travel congests,