Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 5.djvu/78

 62 THE GRANITE MONTHLY.

industrious, and honored a life, — a life of exceptional personal purity, a life which has filled so many positions of private and public responsibility, and filled them without reproach, — meets the sentence which has been passed upon all. His seemed a greater loss because of that activity of life which had given no impressions of die inroads or infirmities of old age. In undecayed vigor of mind, he asked for his children a:id children's children, and with calmness and confidence spoke a parting word to each, and before any disabilities came, which by his strong nature might have been ill-borne, he was gathered to his people. Portsmouth and Concord, and all this State, have, within a few years, lost many men, who, like Mr. Hackett, were justly prominent in all their best affairs. We will not indulge in any reflections about the superiority of the past generation, its greater honor, or power, or reverence. Society is forever gathering the resources, the knowledge, and the experiences by which life may, and must, grow nobler, even though in the presence of venerable lives, of whom we have every reason to be proud, to crown with honors and to keep tenderly in our memories, we mav for a moment be anxious or despair. There are for us advantages they fondly yearned after and had not. In our little country villages there are those whom an inexhaustible, impartial, and lavish Providence is bringing forward to take the places which our leading men have left vacant, but we may leave them the assurance that it will be no easy task. It cannot be done without toil and fidelity ; without self control and honor ; without a willingness to bear one's share of the social burdens ; without an independent and conscientious interest in those spiritual realities upon which rest eternal issues.

��LETTER FROM JOHN ADAMS TO GOV. WILLIAM PLUMER.

QuiNCY, April II, 1815. Respected Sir : I am this week embarking two grandsons to meet their par- ents in England. They go for Liverpool in the new Packet, Captain Bronson. How my son will terminate his career, or how any other man in public service in this country will come out at last, no intelligence short of divine wisdom, I believe, can foretell. It is probable he will lose in England, as his father did, all the little popularity he ever had. And the sincere wish of my heart is, that he may return to his country and enjoy in private life as much tranquility and comfort as his father has done for the last fourteen years. With respects to yourself, and compliments to your son.

Your servant,

JOHN ADAMS.

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