FullReads

In the kitchen is a funny cradle, hooded, and cut out of a great pine log. The little mattress and the coverlet seem disturbed, and you would declare the baby had just been lifted out, and you listen for its cry. The rocker is worn by the feet of mothers whose hands were busy with needles or wheel as they rocked and sang. And from the fact that it is in the kitchen, you know that the servant-girl problem then had no terrors.

Overhead hang ears of corn, bunches of dried catnip, pennyroyal and boneset, and festooned across the corner are strings of dried apples.

Then you go upstairs, with conscience pricking a bit for thus visiting the house of honest folks when they are away, for you know how all good housewives dislike to have people prying about, especially in the upper chambers–at least June said so!

The room to the right was Abigail’s own. You would know it was a woman’s room. There is a faint odor of lavender and thyme about it, and the white and blue draperies around the little mirror, and the little feminine nothings on the dresser, reveal the lady who would appear well before the man she loves.

The bed is a high, draped four-poster, plain and solid, evidently made by a ship-carpenter who had ambitions. The coverlet is light blue, and matches the draperies of windows, dresser and mirror. On the pillow is a nightcap, in which even a homely woman would be beautiful.

There is a clothespress in the corner, into which Mr. Spear says we may look. On the door is a slippery-elm button, and within, hanging on wooden pegs, are dainty dresses; stiff, curiously embroidered gowns they are, that came from across the sea, sent, perhaps, by John Adams when he went to France, and left Abigail here to farm and sew and weave and teach the children. June 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.”