hs, letters, and chance mention in
various diaries.

Hancock did not live to see John Adams President. Worn by worry, and grown
old before his time, he died at the early age of fifty-six, of a
combination of gout and that unplebeian complaint we now term Bright's
Disease.

Thirty-three years after, hale old John Adams down at Quincy spoke of him
as "a clever fellow, a bit spoiled by a legacy, whom I used to know in my
younger days."

He left no descendants, and his heirs were too intent on being in at the
death to care for his memory. They neither preserved the data of his life,
nor over his grave placed a headstone. The monument that now marks his
resting-place was recently erected by the State of Massachusetts. He was
buried in the Old Granary Burying-Ground, on Tremont Street, and only a
step from his grave sleeps his friend Samuel Adams.

JOHN QUINCY ADAMS

To the guidance of the legislative councils; to the assistance of
the executive and subordinate departments; to the friendly
co-operation of the respective State Governments; to the candid
and liberal support of the people, so far as it may be deserved
by honest industry and zeal, I shall look for whatever success
may attend my public service; and knowing that "except the Lord
keep the city, the watchman waketh in vain," with fervent
supplications for His favor, to His overruling providence I
commit, with humble but fearless confidence, my own fate and the
future destinies of my country.
--_Inaugural Address_

[Illustration: JOHN QUINCY ADAMS]

Nine miles south of Boston, just a little back from the escalloped shores
of Old Ocean, lies the village of Braintree. It is on the Plymouth
post-road, being one of that string of settlements, built a few miles
apart for better protection, that lined the sea, Boston being crowded, and
Plymouth full to overflowing, the home-seekers spread out north and south.

In Sixteen Hundred Twenty, when the first cabin was built at Braintree,
land that was not in sight of the coast had actually no value. Back a
mile, all was a howling wilderness, with trails made by wild beasts or
savage men as wild. These paths led through tangles of fallen trees and
tumbled rocks, beneath dark, overhanging pines where winter's snows melted
not till midsummer, and the sun's rays were strange and alien. Men who
sought to traverse these ways had to crouch and crawl or climb. Through
them no