tokens of a love which bound together for a little
while here on earth, and binds together for evermore in heaven,
Christian mother and son.

Sir Walter of the land
Of song and old romance,
Tradition in his cunning hand
Obedient as the lance

His valiant Black Knight bore,
Wove into literature
The legend, myth, and homely lore
Which now for us endure,

To charm our weary hours,
To rouse our stagnant hearts,
And leave the sense of new-born powers,
Which never more departs.

We thank him in the name
Of One who sits on high,
And aye abides in every fame
Which makes a brighter sky.

* * * * *

IV.

ABIGAIL ADAMS

(BORN 1744--DIED 1818.)

THE WIFE OF OUR SECOND PRESIDENT--THE MOTHER OF OUR SIXTH.

Abigail Smith, the daughter of a Congregational minister, of Weymouth,
Massachusetts, was one of the most noted women of our early history. She
left a record of her heart and character, and to some extent a picture
of the stirring times in which she lived, in the shape of letters which
are of perennial value, especially to the young. "It was fashionable to
ridicule female learning" in her day; and she says of herself in one of
her letters, "I was never sent to any school." She adds in explanation,
"I was always sick." When girls, however, were sent to school, their
education seldom went beyond writing and arithmetic. But in spite of
disadvantages, she read and studied in private, and by means of
correspondence with relatives and others, cultivated her mind, and
formed an easy and graceful style of writing.

On the 25th of October, 1764, Miss Smith became the wife of John Adams,
a lawyer of Braintree, the part of the town in which he lived being
afterwards called Quincy, in honor of Mrs. Adams's maternal grandfather.
Charles Francis Adams, her grandson, from whose memoir of her the
material for this brief sketch is drawn, says that the ten years
immediately following her marriage present little that is worth
recording.

But when the days of the Revolution came on, those times that tried
men's souls, women were by no means exempt from tribulation, and they,
too, began to make history. The strength of Mrs. Adams's affection for
her husband may be learned from an extract from one of her letters: "I
very well remember when Eastern circuits of the courts, which lasted a
month, were thoug