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Patty Rutter: The Quaker Doll Who Slept In Independence Hall
by
Poor little Patty began to cry. Where could she be? She reached out her hand, and climbed the huge beams that encased the bell, and tried to touch the tongue. She wanted to hear it ring again, but could not reach it.
“It’s curious, curious,” she sobbed, wiping her eyes and turning them with a thrill of delight upon a beloved name that greeted her vision. It was growing dark, and she might be wrong. But no, it was the dear name of Adams; and she saw, in a basket, a little pile of baby raiment. There were dainty caps and tiny shirts of cambric, whose linen was like a gossamer web, and whose delicate lines of hem-stitch were scarcely discernible; there were small dresses, yellow with the sun color that time had poured over them, and they hung with pathetic crease and tender fold over the sides of the basket.
The little woman paused and peered to read these words, “Baby-clothes, made by Mrs. John Adams for her son, John Quincy Adams.”
“Little John Quincy!” she cried, “A baby so long ago!” She took the little caps in her hands, she pulled out the crumpled lace that edged them. She said, through the swift-falling tears:
“Oh, I remember when he was brought home dead, and how, in the Independence Hall of the State House at Philadelphia, he lay in state, that the inhabitants who knew his deeds, and those of his father, John, and his uncle, Samuel, might see his face. I love the Adamses every one,” and she softly pressed the baby-caps that had been wrought by a mother, ere the country began, to her small Quaker lips, with real New England fervor for its very own. Tenderly she laid them down, to see, while the light was fading, a huge picture on the wall. She studied it long, trying to discern the faces, with their savage beauty; the sturdy right-doing men who stood before them; and then her eyes began to glisten, and gather light from the picture; her lips parted, her breath quickened; for Patty Rutter had gone beyond her life associations in Massachusetts, back to the times in which her Quaker ancestors had make treaty with the native Indians.
“It is!” she cried with a shout; “It is Penn’s treaty!” Patty gazed at it until she could see no longer. “I’m glad it is the last thing my eyes will remember,” she said sorrowfully, when in the gloom she turned away, went down the hall, and entered her glass chamber.
“Never mind my watch,” she said softly. “When I waken it will be daylight, and I need not wind it. It will be so sweet to lie here through the night in such grand and goodly company. I only wish Mrs. Samuel Adams could come and kiss me good night.”
With these words, Patty Rutter laid herself to rest upon the silken quilt from Gardiner’s Island; and if you look within the Relic Room, opposite to Independence Hall, in the old State House at Philadelphia, in this Centennial summer, you will find her there, still taking her long nap, fully indorsed by Miss Adams, and in Independence Hall, across the passage way, you will see the portraits of more than fifty of the Fathers of the nation, but the Mothers abide at home.