king a daily trip to Boston
with letter-bags across his saddlebows.

When eleven years of age, his father came home to say that some one had to
go to France to serve with Jay and Franklin in making a treaty.

"Go," said Abigail, "and God be with you!" But when it was suggested that
John Quincy go, too, the parting did not seem so easy. But it was a fine
opportunity for the boy to see the world of men, and the mother's head
appreciated it even if her heart did not. And yet she had the heroism that
is willing to remain behind.

So father and son sailed away; and little John Quincy added postscripts to
his father's letters and said, "I send my loving duty to my mamma."

The boy took kindly to foreign ways, as boys will, and the French language
had no such terrors for him as it had for his father. The first stay in
Europe was only three months, and back they came on a leaky ship.

But the home-stay was even shorter than the stay abroad, and John Adams
had again to cross the water on his country's business. Again the boy went
with him.

It was five years before the mother saw him. And then he had gone on alone
from Paris to London to meet her. She did not know him, for he was nearly
eighteen and a man grown. He had visited every country in Europe and been
the helper and companion of statesmen and courtiers, and seen society in
its various phases. He spoke several languages, and in point of polish and
manly dignity was the peer of many of his elders. Mrs. Adams looked at him
and then began to cry, whether for joy or for sorrow she did not know. Her
boy had gone, escaped her, gone forever, but, instead, here was a tall
young diplomat calling her "mother."

There was a career ahead for John Quincy Adams--his father knew it, his
mother was sure of it, and John Quincy himself was not in doubt. He could
then have gone right on, but his father was a Harvard man, and the New
England superstition was strong in the Adams heart that success could only
be achieved when based on a Harvard parchment.

So back to Massachusetts sailed John Quincy; and a two-year course at
Harvard secured the much-desired diploma.

From the very time he crawled over this kitchen-floor and pushed a chair,
learning to walk, or tumbled down the stairs and then made his way bravely
up again alone, he knew that he would arrive. Precocious, proud, firm, and
with a coldness in his nature that was not a heritage from either his
father or his mother, he made