e examined the dresses carefully, and said the embroidery was
handmade, and must have taken months and months to complete. On a high
shelf of the closet are bandboxes, in which are bonnets, astonishing
bonnets, with prodigious flaring fronts. Mr. Spear insisted that June
should try one on, and when she did we stood off and declared the effect
was a vision of loveliness. Outside the clothespress, on a peg, hangs a
linsey-woolsey every-day gown that shows marks of wear. The waist came
just under June's arms, and the bottom of the dress to her shoe-tops.

We asked Mr. Spear the price of it, but the custodian is not commercial.
In a corner of the room is a cedar chest containing hand-woven linen.

By the front window is a little, low desk, with a leaf that opens out for
a writing-shelf. And here you see quill-pens, fresh nibbed, and ink in a
curious well made from horn. Here it was that Abigail wrote those letters
to her lover-husband when he attended those first and second Congresses in
Philadelphia; and then when he was in France and England, those letters in
which we see affection, loyalty, tales of babies with colic, brave,
political good sense, and all those foolish trifles that go to fill up
love-letters, and, at the last, are their divine essence and charm.

Here, she wrote the letter telling of going with their seven-year-old boy,
John Quincy, to Penn's Hill to watch the burning of Charlestown; and saw
the flashing of cannons and rising smoke that marked the battle of Bunker
Hill. Here she wrote to her husband when he was minister to England,
"This little cottage has more comfort and satisfaction for you than the
courts of royalty."

But of all the letters written by that brave woman none reveals her true
nobility better than the one written to her husband the day he became
President of the United States. Here it is entire:

Quincy, 8 February, 1797

"The sun is dressed in brightest beams,
To give thy honors to the day."

"And may it prove an auspicious prelude to each ensuing season.
You have this day to declare yourself head of a Nation. And now,
O Lord, my God, Thou hast made Thy servant ruler over the people.
Give unto him an understanding heart, that he may know how to go
out and come in before this great people; that he may discern
between good and bad. For who is able to judge this Thy so great
a people, were the words of a royal Sovereign; and not le