The next year Boston held a meeting to instruct the Provincial Legislature to oppose the British usurpations, and John Adams was on the committee to prepare the instructions, with Richard Dana and Joseph Warren-the same Warren who fell on Bunker Hill, seven years later. On the fifth of March, 1770, a collision occurred between British soldiers and some citizens of Boston, in which five citizens were killed and many wounded, which was called "Bloody Massacre." The excitement grew more and more intense every year, and the Adams family was in the heat of it.

In December, 1773, the tea was destroyed in Boston harbor, and the harbor closed soon after. On September 5, 1774, the first American Congress met in Philadelphia, with John Adams as a member. In 1775, at his suggestion, George Washington was appointed commander-in-chief of the American army, and on June 17 the battle of Bunker Hill was fought, with Mrs. Adams and her children looking from the summit of Penn's Hill, not far from their home, at the burning of Charlestown, and hearing the distant roar of battle. The mother and children entered into the life of the times just as did Mr. Adams himself. During the siege of Boston, which followed right on, Mrs. Adams kept her house open to the soldiers in their needs, and often gave them food, shelter and sympathy. Her letters to him abound with descriptions of the fearful times, the sleepless nights and anxious days they were passing through, and the scenes in which she and her family had a part. The life, spirit and grandeur of those "times which tried men's souls" were felt by the Adamses as forcibly as by any who then lived. it was in the midst of those times that John Quincy Adams came into being, charged with the life of the mighty period; and its scenes, deeds and forces were among his first teachers. It can not be otherwise than that he was made in part by these things. His soul was of his times-a product of the American revolution.

HIS BOYHOOD.

And

Usually boys are boys the world over; but John Quincy Adams was an exception. Edward Everett Hale said of him:

"There seemed to be in his life no such stage as boyhood." When about nine years old he wrote to his father in Congress this letter:

BRAINTREE, June 2, 1777.

DEAR SIR,-I love to receive letters very well, much better than I love to write them. I make a poor figure at composition. My head is much too fickle. My thoughts are running after bird's eggs, play and trifles, till I get vexed with myself. Mamma has a troublesome task to keep me a studying. I own I am ashamed of myself. I have just entered the third volume of Rollin's History, but designed to have got half through it by this time. I am determined to be more diligent. Mr. Thaxter is absent at court. I have set myself a stint this week, to read the third volume half out. If I can but keep my resolution, I may again, at the end of the week, give a better account of myself. I wish, sir, you would give me, in writing, some instructions with regard to the use of my time, and advise me how to proportion my studies and play, and I will keep them by me and endeavor to follow them. With the present determination of growing better, I am, dear sir, your son, JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.

P. S.- Sir, if you will please be so good as to favor me with a blank book, I will transcribe the most remarkable passages I meet with in my reading, which will serve to fix them upon my mind.

Very little of the boy in that. The first sentence or two is a little boy-like. The reference to the bird's eggs and play indicate that the boy was in him, but suppressed, and he was bound to crush him out. A nine-year-old reading Rollin's History and transcribing the most remarkable passages to fix them in his mind!

February 13, 1778, John Adams started on a mission to France to which he had been appointed by Congress. He took his son, then not quite eleven, with him. In a note he sent to his wife just as they were to enter the frigate to depart, he said: "Johnny sends his duty to his mamma, and his love to his sisters and brothers. He behaves like a man."

"He behaves like a man!" Glad was the father no doubt to write that; but it indicates that the man was already getting the mastery of the boy, that the training he was receiving from his parents and the times was rapidly developing the man.

He learned the rudiments of an education in the village school of Braintree. In after life he often playfully boasted

that the dame who taught him to spell flattered him into learning his letters by telling him he would prove a scholar. A student in his father's office instructed him in the elements of Latin.

Mr. Adams remained in Paris till June, 1779, when he and his son returned. In November, 1779, he went again to France to meet commissioners from England to negotiate a treaty of peace. Young Adams went again with his father.

In July, 1780, Mr. Adams was appointed ambassador to the Netherlands, and his son was removed from the schools of Paris to those of Amsterdam, and later to the University of Leyden. There he studied till July of the next year, when, at the age of fourteen, he was invited by Francis Dana, minister from the United States to the Russian court, to become his private secretary, and he accompanied him through Germany to St. Petersburg. Beyond his official duties he found time to continue his Latin, French and German studies, together with English history, until September, 1782, when he went to Stockholm and passed the winter. The next spring he went through Sweden to the Hague, where he met his father and went with him to Paris. He was present at the signing of the treaty of peace in 1783. He went with his father to England visiting eminent men and noted places; after which he returned to Paris and his studies, till May, 1785, when both father and son returned to the United States. He was now eighteen years old. His father had just been appointed minister to England. Should he go with his father, or go to college? Here was a great temptation. He saw the glittering prospects of a life at the court of St. James; he knew he needed the drill and discipline of a college and professional course of study. His father's finances had suffered by his public service. The boy chose to go home to study and become an independent worker-out of his own fortune. Wise choice, showing that the man and not the boy had control of him. After reviewing his studies under an instructor, he entered the junior class in Harvard college in March, 1786, a little before he was nineteen years of age. He graduated in 1787 with the second honor of his class, and gave an oration

on "The Importance of Public Faith to the Well-being of a Community," which was published on account of the interest felt in it.

THE LAWYER.

Now, at twenty years of age, young Adams entered upon the study of law, in the office of Theophilus Parsons, afterward chief justice of Massachusetts, at Newburyport. He was admitted to the bar in 1790. He at once opened an office in Boston. He was a stranger there, though born within ten miles. He afterward said of his practice. "I can hardly call it practice, because for the space of one year it would be difficult for me to name any practice which I had to do. For two years, indeed, I can recall nothing in which I was engaged that may be termed practice, though during the second year, there were some symptoms that by persevering patience, practice might come in time. The third year, I continued this patience and perseverance, and having little to do, occupied my time as well as I could in the study of those laws and institutions which I have since been called to administer. At the end of the third year I had obtained something which might be called practice. The fourth year, I found it swelling to such an extent that I felt no longer any concern as to my future destiny as a member of that profession. But in the midst of the fourth year, by the will of the first president of the United States, with which the Senate was pleased to concur, I was selected for a station, not, perhaps, of more usefulness, but of greater consequence in the estimation of mankind, and sent from home on a mission to foreign parts."

THE WRITER.

While waiting for clients and continuing the active study of his profession, Mr. Adams was not a careless spectator of national affairs. He was an intense patriot. His travels abroad had made his patriotism broader, richer, more intelligent. He had been so thoroughly trained by his mother and the community in which he was born, in the morals of life, which he had been taught to apply to political and national affairs, that

it was difficult for him to separate his personal life from the life of the nation. About this time Thomas Paine's "Rights of Man" was published in this country, with the approval of Thomas Jefferson. Both Paine and Jefferson had been much in France, and much influenced by the radically democratic, or as we would say now, communistic views of the French leaders in their revolution. Mr. Adams saw clearly the "political heresies" of Mr. Paine's pamphlet, and the mischief it was likely to do among the American people, who sympathized intensely with the French in their struggle for liberty, and exposed those heresies, and explained the difference between the French struggle and our own, in a series of articles which he published in the "Columbia Centinel," over the signature "Publicola."

In April, 1793, Great Britain declared war against France. Such was the sympathy for France in this country, that multitudes were ready to make our republic a French ally against our old enemy.

Mr. Adams published another series of letters, over the signature of "Marcellus," in which he advocated with great ability the neutrality of the United States. He enlarged upon the necessity of our keeping clear of all foreign entanglements.

A little later he published another series, over the signature of "Columbus," severely criticising citizen Genet, whom France had sent here to arouse America in her behalf. These several articles were republished in pamphlets and other papers and widely read. They were published also, in England and held as among the ablest political writings from America. Washington and his cabinet read them with great interest. They advocated in the main the doctrines Washington was trying to enforce in his administration. They did not suit either party, but were broader and wiser than either. They tended greatly to establish an American course of conduct, and fix many things on solid bases, which were then unsettled. They threw light, and much of it, into the gloom of that most doubtful period of our national history.

In these papers there was not only shown great political and literary ability and moral character of a high order, but a clear