of the Adams' home all her blessed
thirty-two sunshiny summers; she also boasts a Mayflower ancestry, with,
however, a slight infusion of Castle Garden, like myself, to give firmness
of fiber--and yet she had never been to Quincy.

The John and Abigail cottage was built in Seventeen Hundred Sixteen, so
says a truthful brick found in the quaint old chimney. Deacon Penniman
built this house for his son, and it faces the sea, although the older
Penniman house faces the south. John Adams was born in the older house;
but when he used to go to Weymouth every Wednesday and Saturday evening to
see Abigail Smith, the minister's daughter, his father, the worthy
shoemaker, told him that when he got married he could have the other house
for himself.

John was a bright young lawyer then, a graduate of Harvard, where he had
been sent in hopes that he would become a minister, for one-half the
students then at Harvard were embryo preachers. But John did not take to
theology.

He had witnessed ecclesiastical tennis and theological pitch and toss in
Braintree that had nearly split the town, and he decided on the law. One
thing sure, he could not work: he was not strong enough for
that--everybody said so. And right here seems a good place to call
attention to the fact that weak men, like those who are threatened, live
long. John Adams' letters to his wife reveal a very frequent reference to
liver complaint, lung trouble, and that tired feeling, yet he lived to be
ninety-two.

The Reverend Mr. Smith did not at first favor the idea of his daughter
Abigail marrying John Adams. The Adams family were only farmers (and
shoemakers when it rained), while the Smiths had aristocracy on their
side. He said lawyers were men who got bad folks out of trouble and good
folks in. But Abigail said that this lawyer was different; and as Mr.
Smith saw it was a love-match, and such things being difficult to combat
successfully, he decided he would do the next best thing--give the young
couple his blessing. Yet the neighbors were quite scandalized to think
that their pastor's daughter should hold converse over the gate with a
lawyer, and they let the clergyman know it as neighbors then did, and
sometimes do now. Then did the Reverend Mr. Smith announce that he would
preach a sermon on the sin of meddling with other folk's business. As his
text he took the passage from Luke, seventh chapter, thirty-third verse:
"For John came neither eating bread nor drinki