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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 his way.

It was a zigzag course, and the way was strewn with the flotsam and jetsam of wrecked parties and blighted hopes, but out of the wreckage John Quincy Adams always appeared, calm, poised and serene. When he opposed the purchase of Louisiana it looks as if he allowed his animosity for Jefferson to put his judgment in chancery. He made mistakes, but this was the only blunder of his career. The record of that life expressed in bold stands thus:

1767–Born May Eleventh.
1776–Post-rider between Boston and Quincy.
1778—At school in Paris.
1780–At school in Leyden.
1781–Private Secretary to Minister to Russia.
1787—Graduated at Harvard.
1794–Minister at The Hague.
1797–Married Louise Catherine Johnson, of Maryland.
1797–Minister at Berlin.
1802–Member of Massachusetts State Senate.
1803–United States Senator.
1806–Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory at Harvard
1809–Minister to Russia.
1811–Nominated and confirmed by Senate as Judge of Supreme Court of the United States; declined.
1814–Commissioner at Ghent to treat for peace with Great Britain.
1815–Minister to Great Britain.
1817–Secretary of State.
1825–Elected President of the United States.
1830–Elected a Member of Congress, and represented the district for seventeen years.
1848–Stricken with paralysis February Twenty-first in the Capitol, and died the second day after.

* * * * *

“Aren’t we staying in this room a good while?” said June; “you have sat there staring out of that window looking at nothing for just ten minutes, and not a word have you spoken!”

Mr. Spear had disappeared into space, and so we made our way across the little hall to the room that belonged to Mr. Adams. It was in the disorder that men’s rooms are apt to be. On the table were quill-pens and curious old papers with seals on them, and on one I saw the date, June Sixteenth, Seventeen Hundred Sixty-eight–the whole document written out in the hand of John Adams, beginning very prim and careful, then moving off into a hurried scrawl as spirit mastered the letter. There is a little hair-covered trunk in the corner, studded with brass nails, and boots and leggings and canes and a jackknife and a bootjack, and, on the window-sill, a friendly snuffbox. In the clothespress were buff trousers and an embroidered coat, and shoes with silver buckles, and several suits of every-day clothes, showing wear and patches.