Page:The Ladies of the White House.djvu/132

114 deprived of the luxuries which too often enervate and render worthless the capacities of woman, she was as independent and self-supporting in her actions, as were the inspirations of her mind; and through good and evil report, conduced by her example to place that reliance in her country's success which in a great measure secured its independence. Her character was one of undeviating fairness and frank truthfulness, free from affectation and vanity.

From the year 1801 down to the day of her death, a period of seventeen years, she lived uninterruptedly at Quincy. The old age of Mrs. Adams was not one of grief and repining, of clouds and darkness; her cheerfulness continued with the full possession of her faculties to the last, and her sunny spirit enlivened the small social circle around her, brightened the solitary hours of her husband, and spread the influence of its example over the town where she lived. "Yesterday," she writes, to a grand-daughter, on the 26th of October, 1814, "completes half a century since I entered the marriage state, then just your age. I have great cause of thankfulness that I have lived so long and enjoyed so large a portion of happiness as has been my lot. The greatest source of unhappiness I have known, in that period, has arisen from the long and cruel separations which I was called, in a time of war, and with a young family around me, to submit to."

The appointment of her eldest son as Minister to Great Britain, by President Madison, was a life-long