his way.

It was a zigzag course, and the way was strewn with the flotsam and jetsam
of wrecked parties and blighted hopes, but out of the wreckage John Quincy
Adams always appeared, calm, poised and serene. When he opposed the
purchase of Louisiana it looks as if he allowed his animosity for
Jefferson to put his judgment in chancery. He made mistakes, but this was
the only blunder of his career. The record of that life expressed in bold
stands thus:

1767--Born May Eleventh.
1776--Post-rider between Boston and Quincy.
1778---At school in Paris.
1780--At school in Leyden.
1781--Private Secretary to Minister to Russia.
1787---Graduated at Harvard.
1794--Minister at The Hague.
1797--Married Louise Catherine Johnson, of Maryland.
1797--Minister at Berlin.
1802--Member of Massachusetts State Senate.
1803--United States Senator.
1806--Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory at Harvard
1809--Minister to Russia.
1811--Nominated and confirmed by Senate as Judge of Supreme Court
of the United States; declined.
1814--Commissioner at Ghent to treat for peace with Great Britain.
1815--Minister to Great Britain.
1817--Secretary of State.
1825--Elected President of the United States.
1830--Elected a Member of Congress, and represented the district
for seventeen years.
1848--Stricken with paralysis February Twenty-first in the
Capitol, and died the second day after.

* * * * *

"Aren't we staying in this room a good while?" said June; "you have sat
there staring out of that window looking at nothing for just ten minutes,
and not a word have you spoken!"

Mr. Spear had disappeared into space, and so we made our way across the
little hall to the room that belonged to Mr. Adams. It was in the disorder
that men's rooms are apt to be. On the table were quill-pens and curious
old papers with seals on them, and on one I saw the date, June Sixteenth,
Seventeen Hundred Sixty-eight--the whole document written out in the hand
of John Adams, beginning very prim and careful, then moving off into a
hurried scrawl as spirit mastered the letter. There is a little
hair-covered trunk in the corner, studded with brass nails, and boots and
leggings and canes and a jackknife and a bootjack, and, on the
window-sill, a friendly snuffbox. In the clothespress were buff trousers
and an embroidered coat, and shoes