Page:The part taken by women in American history.djvu/248

Rh In this elevated position, the grace and elegance of Mrs. Adams, with her charm of conversation were rendered more attractive by her frank sincerity. Her close observation, discrimination of character and clear judgment gave her an influence which men and women acknowledged. Her husband appreciated her worth, and was sustained in spirit by her buoyant cheerfulness and affectionate sympathy in the multiplicity of labor which the highest office of his country brought him.

It was hers, too, to disarm the demon of party spirit, to calm agitations, heal the rankling wounds of pride, and pluck the root of bitterness away.

After the retirement of her husband, Mrs. Adams continued to take a deep interest in public affairs. Her health was much impaired, however, and from this time she remained in her rural seclusion at Quincy.

Mrs. Martha Wayles Jefferson, wife of the third President of the United States, was born in 1748 in Charles County, Virginia, and died September 6, 1782, at Monticello, the famous country home of Thomas Jefferson, near Charlottesville, Virginia. Her father, John Wayles, was a wealthy lawyer, who gave his daughter all the advantages of refinement and education which were afforded at this time. Her first husband was Bathurst Skelton, whom she had married at a very early age, becoming a widow before she was twenty. In January, 1772, she married Thomas Jefferson. In 1781 Mrs. Jefferson's health became so precarious that her husband refused a foreign mission. In the autumn of 1782 she died. She was the mother of five children, three of whom survived her.

Perhaps no better reason why the biography of Martha Jefferson is important can be given than the following estimate of her, found in a history of our young Republic: "As a child, she was her father's only comforter in the great sorrows of his life, in matured years she was his intimate friend and compan-