Brave Men and Women Part 3

"Justice, humanity, and benevolence, are the duties you owe to society in general. To your country the same duties are inc.u.mbent upon you, with the additional obligation of sacrificing ease, pleasure, wealth, and life itself for its defense and security. To your parents you owe love, reverence, and obedience to all just and equitable commands. To yourself,--here, indeed, is a wide field to expatiate upon. To become what you ought to be, and what a fond mother wishes to see you, attend to some precepts and instructions from the pen of one who can have no motive but your welfare and happiness, and who wishes in this way to supply to you the personal watchfulness and care which a separation from you deprived you of at a period of life when habits are easiest acquired and fixed; and though the advice may not be new, yet suffer it to obtain a place in your memory, for occasions may offer, and perhaps some concurring circ.u.mstances unite, to give it weight and force.

"Suffer me to recommend to you one of the most useful lessons of life--the knowledge and study of yourself. There you run the greatest hazard of being deceived. Self-love and partiality cast a mist before the eyes, and there is no knowledge so hard to be acquired, nor of more benefit when once thoroughly understood. Ungoverned pa.s.sions have aptly been compared to the boisterous ocean, which is known to produce the most terrible effects. 'Pa.s.sions are the elements of life,' but elements which are subject to the control of reason. Whoever will candidly examine themselves, will find some degree of pa.s.sion, peevishness, or obstinacy in their natural tempers. You will seldom find these disagreeable ingredients all united in one; but the uncontrolled indulgence of either is sufficient to render the possessor unhappy in himself, and disagreeable to all who are so unhappy as to be witnesses of it, or suffer from its effects.

"You, my dear son, are formed with a const.i.tution feelingly alive; your pa.s.sions are strong and impetuous; and, though I have sometimes seen them hurry you into excesses, yet with pleasure I have observed a frankness and generosity accompany your efforts to govern and subdue them. Few persons are so subject to pa.s.sion but that they can command themselves when they have a motive sufficiently strong; and those who are most apt to transgress will restrain themselves through respect and reverence to superiors, and even, where they wish to recommend themselves, to their equals. The due government of the pa.s.sions has been considered in all ages as a most valuable acquisition. Hence an inspired writer observes, 'He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty; and he that ruleth his spirit, than he than taketh a city.' This pa.s.sion, co-operating with power, and unrestrained by reason, has produced the subversion of cities, the desolation of countries, the ma.s.sacre of nations, and filled the world with injustice and oppression.

Behold your own country, your native land, suffering from the effects of lawless power and malignant pa.s.sions, and learn betimes, from your own observation and experience, to govern and control yourself. Having once obtained this self-government, you will find a foundation laid for happiness to yourself and usefulness to mankind. 'Virtue alone is happiness below;' and consists in cultivating and improving every good inclination, and in checking and subduing every propensity to evil. I have been particular upon the pa.s.sion of anger, as it is generally the most predominant pa.s.sion at your age, the soonest excited, and the least pains are taken to subdue it;

'What composes man, can man destroy.'"

With such a mother to counsel him, one is led to ask, how could John Quincy Adams _help_ becoming a n.o.ble-minded and great man? Who wonders that, with good natural endowments and his excellent privileges, coupled with maternal training, he fitted himself to fill the highest office in the gift of a free people?

In June, 1784, Mrs. Adams sailed for London, to join her husband, who was then our Minister at the Court of St. James. While absent, she visited France and Netherlands; resided for a time in the former country; and returned with her knowledge of human nature, of men, manners, etc., enlarged; disgusted with the splendor and sophistications of royalty, and well prepared to appreciate the republican simplicity and frankness of which, she was herself a model. While Mr. Adams was Vice-president and President, she never laid aside her singleness of heart and that sincerity and unaffected dignity which had won for her many friends before her elevation, and which, in spite of national animosity, conquered the prejudices and gained the heart of the aristocracy of Great Britain. But her crowning virtue was her Christian humility, which is beautifully exemplified in a letter which she wrote to Mr. Adams, on the 8th of February, 1797, "the day on which the votes for President were counted, and Mr. Adams, as Vice-president, was required by law to announce himself the President elect for the ensuing term:"

"'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 G.o.d, 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 less applicable to him who is invested with the chief magistracy of a nation, though he wear not a crown nor the robes of royalty.

"My thoughts and my meditations are with you, though personally absent; and my pet.i.tions to Heaven are, that 'the things which make for peace may not be hidden from your eyes.' My feelings are not those of pride or ostentation, upon the occasion. They are solemnized by a sense of the obligations, the important trusts, and numerous duties connected with it. That you may be enabled to discharge them with honor to yourself, with justice and impartiality to your country, and with satisfaction to this great people, shall be the daily prayer of your A.A."

From her husband's retirement from the Presidency in 1801, to the close of her life in 1818, Mrs. Adams remained constantly at Quincy. Cheerful, contented, and happy, she devoted her last years, in that rural seclusion, to the reciprocities of friends.h.i.+p and love, to offices of kindness and charity, and, in short, to all those duties which tend to ripen the Christian for an exchange of worlds.

But it would be doing injustice to her character and leaving one of her n.o.blest deeds unrecorded, to close without mentioning the influence for good which she exerted over Mr. Adams, and her part in the work of making him what he was. That he was sensible of the benignant influence of wives, may be gathered from the following letter, which was addressed to Mrs. Adams from Philadelphia, on the 11th of August, 1777:

"I think I have sometimes observed to you in conversation, that upon examining the biography of ill.u.s.trious men you will generally find some female about them, in the relation of mother or wife or sister, to whose instigation a great part of their merit is to be ascribed. You will find a curious example of this in the case of Aspasia, the wife of Pericles.

She was a woman of the greatest beauty and the first genius. She taught him, it is said, his refined maxims of policy, his lofty imperial eloquence, nay, even composed the speeches on which so great a share of his reputation was founded.

"I wish some of our great men had such wives. By the account in your last letter, it seems the women in Boston begin to think themselves able to serve their country. What a pity it is that our generals in the northern districts had not Aspasias to their wives!

"I believe the two Howes have not very great women to their wives. If they had, we should suffer more from their exertions than we do. This is our good fortune. A smart wife would have put Howe in possession of Philadelphia a long time ago."

While Mr. Adams was wis.h.i.+ng that some of our great men had such wives as Aspasia, he had such a wife, was himself such a man, and owed half his greatness to _his_ Aspasia. The exalted patriotism and cheerful piety infused into the letters she addressed to him during the long night of political uncertainty that hung over the country, strengthened his courage, fired his n.o.bler feelings, nerved his higher purposes, and, doubtless, greatly contributed to make him one of the chief pillars of the young republic. All honor to a brave wife, and not less heroic mother. If her husband and son kept the s.h.i.+p of state from the rocks, the light which guided them was largely from her.

Heroic wife and mother, Whose days were toil and grace, Thy glory gleams for many another, And s.h.i.+nes in many a face.

The heart, as of a nation, Throbs with thy tender love; And all our drama of salvation Thou watchest from above.

Our days, which yet are evil, And only free in part, Have need of things with Heaven co-eval, Of Faith's unbounded heart.

G.o.d grant the times approaching Be full of glad events, No unheroic aims reproaching Our line of Presidents.

V.

TWO NEIGHBOURS.

WHAT THEY GOT OUT OF LIFE.

It was just two o'clock of one of the warmest of the July afternoons.

Mrs. Hill had her dinner all over, had put on her clean cap and ap.r.o.n, and was sitting on the north porch, making an unbleached cotton s.h.i.+rt for Mr. Peter Hill, who always wore unbleached s.h.i.+rts at harvest-time.

Mrs. Hill was a thrifty housewife. She had pursued this economical avocation for some little time, interrupting herself only at times to "_shu_!" away the flocks of half-grown chickens that came noisily about the door for the crumbs from the table-cloth, when the sudden shutting down of a great blue cotton umbrella caused her to drop her work, and exclaim:

"Well, now, Mrs. Troost! who would have thought you ever _would_ come to see me!"

"Why, I have thought a great many times I would come," said the visitor, stamping her little feet--for she was a little woman--briskly on the blue flag-stones, and then dusting them nicely with her white cambric handkerchief, before venturing on the snowy floor of Mrs. Hill. And, shaking hands, she added, "It _has_ been a good while, for I remember when I was here last I had my Jane with me--quite a baby then, if you mind--and she is three years old now."

"Is it possible?" said Mrs. Hill, untying the bonnet-strings of her neighbor, who sighed as she continued, "Yes, she was three along in February;" and she sighed again, more heavily than before, though there was no earthly reason that I know of why she should sigh, unless, perhaps, the flight of time, thus brought to mind, suggested the transitory nature of human things.

Mrs. Hill laid the bonnet of Mrs. Troost on her "spare bed," and covered it with a little pale-blue c.r.a.pe shawl, kept especially for such occasions; and, taking from the drawer of the bureau a large fan of turkey feathers, she presented it to her guest, saying, "A very warm day, isn't it?"

"O, dreadful, dreadful! It seems as hot as a bake oven; and I suffer with the heat all Summer, more or less. But it's a world of suffering;"

and Mrs. Troost half closed her eyes, as if to shut out the terrible reality.

"Hay-making requires suns.h.i.+ny weather, you know; so we must put up with it," said Mrs. Hill; "besides, I can mostly find some cool place about the house; I keep my sewing here on the porch, and, as I bake my bread or cook my dinner, manage to catch it up sometimes, and so keep from getting overheated; and then, too, I get a good many st.i.tches taken in the course of the day."

"This _is_ a nice cool place--completely curtained with vines," said Mrs. Troost; and she sighed again. "They must have cost you a great deal of pains."

"O, no! no trouble at all; morning-glories grow themselves; they only require to be planted. I will save seed for you this Fall, and next Summer you can have your porch as shady as mine."

"And if I do, it would not signify," said Mrs. Troost; "I never get time to sit down from one week's end to another; besides, I never had any luck with vines. Some folks don't, you know."

Mrs. Hill was a woman of a short, plethoric habit; one that might be supposed to move about with little agility, and to find excessive warmth rather inconvenient; but she was of a happy, cheerful temperament; and when it rained she tucked up her skirts, put on thick shoes, and waddled about the same as ever, saying to herself, "This will make the gra.s.s grow," or, "It will bring on the radishes," or something else equally consolatory.

Mrs. Troost, on the contrary, was a little thin woman, who looked as though she could move about nimbly at any .season; but, as she herself often said, she was a poor, unfortunate creature, and pitied herself a great deal, as she was in justice bound to do, for n.o.body else cared, she said, how much she had to bear.

They were near neighbors, these good women, but their social interchanges of tea-drinking were not of very frequent occurrence, for sometimes Mrs. Troost had nothing to wear like other folks; sometimes it was too hot and sometimes it was too cold; and then, again, n.o.body wanted to see her, and she was sure she didn't want to go where she wasn't wanted. Moreover, she had such a great barn of a house as no other woman ever had to take care of. But in all the neighborhood it was called the big house, so Mrs. Troost was in some measure compensated for the pains it cost her. It was, however, as she said, a barn of a place, with half the rooms unfurnished, partly because they had no use for them, and partly because they were unable to get furniture. So it stood right in the sun, with no shutters, and no trees about it, and Mrs.

Troost said she didn't suppose it ever would have. She was always opposed to building it; but she never had her way about any thing.

Nevertheless, some people said Mr. Troost had taken the dimensions of his house with his wife's ap.r.o.n-strings--but that may have been slander.

While Mrs. Troost sat sighing over things in general, Mrs. Hill sewed on the last b.u.t.ton, and, shaking the loose threads from the completed garment, held it up a moment to take a satisfactory view, as it were, and folded it away.

"Well, did you ever!" said Mrs. Troost. "You have made half a s.h.i.+rt, and I have got nothing at all done. My hands sweat so I can not use the needle, and it's no use to try."

"Lay down your work for a little while, and we will walk in the garden."

So Mrs. Hill threw a towel over her head, and, taking a little tin basin in her hand, the two went to the garden--Mrs. Troost under the shelter of the blue umbrella, which she said was so heavy that it was worse than nothing. Beans, radishes, raspberries, and currants, besides many other things, were there in profusion, and Mrs. Troost said every thing flourished for Mrs. Hill, while her garden was all choked up with weeds.

"And you have bees, too--don't they sting the children, and give you a great deal of trouble? Along in May, I guess it was, Troost [Mrs. Troost always called her husband so] bought a hive, or, rather, he traded a calf for one--a nice, likely calf, too, it was--and they never did us a bit of good;" and the unhappy woman sighed.

"They _do_ say," said Mrs. Hill, sympathizingly, "that bees won't work for some folks; in case their king dies they are very likely to quarrel and not do well; but we have never had any ill luck with ours; and we last year sold forty dollars' worth of honey, besides having all we wanted for our own use. Did yours die off, or what, Mrs. Troost?"

"Why," said the ill-natured visitor, "my oldest boy got stung one day, and being angry, upset the hive, and I never found it out for two or three days; and, sending Troost to put it up in its place, there was not a bee to be found high or low."

"You don't tell! the obstinate little creatures! But they must be treated kindly, and I have heard of their going off for less things."

The basin was by this time filled with currants, and they returned to the house. Mrs. Hill, seating herself on the sill of the kitchen door, began to prepare her fruit for tea, while Mrs. Troost drew her chair near, saying, "Did you ever hear about William McMicken's bees?"