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OHN ADAMS is a representative name in the annals of New England. It stands for the average man the hardy, strong middle class, which made up the great body of the early New England society. It belonged to a family that for several generations escaped poverty but did not attain riches; who were of strong sense, but did not become great; who were virtuous, but not marked. with ability for leadership and supremacy. The ancestors of John Adams, the second president, were men of plain common sense, with virtue which often rose into rugged strength. They were of that stock which makes up the anatomy and muscle of strong society. Away back from the beginning of the colony; they were hard-working, good-sensed, solid-charactered men, who added force and stability to the new colony. As they approached his time they rose in their community; more of them sought a liberal education; more of them entered the ministry and served in public trusts; more of them gave evidence of the character-developing effects of the Puritan style of thought and life. His father's oldest brother, Joseph, was a Harvard scholar, and a minister for more than sixty years, in Newington, New Hampshire. His father intended that he should follow his uncle's example. Men of the Adams stamp in the Massachusetts colony believed in education and religion. They founded

schools and colleges and supported them. They believed in an educated ministry and public service. Their state of society was largely the product of university culture in England. There were not many of them university men, but they read the books and were nourished by the thought of university scholars.

The father of John Adams was a small farmer, as the most of his ancestors had been. He was a deacon of the church, while many of his name had served their towns as selectmen and recorders, indicating the range of their place in society.

The subject of this sketch was born in that part of Braintree, Massachusetts, now called Quincy, some ten miles southwest of Boston, October 30, 1735. Little is known of his boyhood, more than that he worked on his father's farm, fished, hunted, played and went to school as other country boys of his time did, till he neared his sixteenth year. About this time his father told him his serious and ambitious intentions concerning him. The boy did not relish the thought of exchanging the free and cheery life of the farm, with the woods and brooks and not-far-off ocean, for the confinement and rigid rules and close study of the college, and told his father that he wanted to be a farmer. "Well, then," his father said, in substance; "if you want to be a farmer it is time you were at it in earnest. It will take all your time from now till you are twenty-one to learn it well. So you can give up play and go to work." John went to the field and plied the heavy irements in thoughtful meditation till weariness was in a.. us muscles. A little steady toil, a little sacrifice of pleasure to a purpose in his doing, a little serious thoughtfulness of life and its use and outcome, led him to conclude that he would like to try his father's plan for him, at least so far as a college course of study was concerned. His father was pleased, and put him at once upon his preparatory studies. At the age of sixteen he entered Harvard and graduated when he was twenty, esteemed for his integrity, energy and ability. He was one of a class of twenty-four, several of whom became distinguished men, but none so much so as he. Though among his farm-boy associates no one dreamed of his superior capacities, he had not got through his college course

before he was recognized as one of the three strongest scholars in his class; and the two who were classed with him became noted men, one of them a president of the college, the other a distinguished divine. The sharpening and developing effect of the college study soon began to show the quality and strength of the coming man.

JOHN ADAMS A TEACHER.

Now that he was through college by his father's aid, he must at once do something for his own support. He soon got a position as teacher in a grammar school in Worcester, for such meager pay as to barely meet his wants. But he made it help him in other ways. The minds of his school children became studies. The government of his school taught him law, jurisprudence, executive order. He had a miniature republic before him, with each individual's rights claiming place in connection with the general good, each limiting the other. The subject of government had at this time become a great study in all the colonies. Everybody was a politician. All theories of government were studied and discussed. Every town was a sort of public lyceum for the study and discussion of government. Many were reading history to find philosophy and example to help them to true opinions and right conclusions. People can now scarcely realize the interest then felt in all that pertained to social order and well being. They were a new people on a new continent, crystalizing into a new order of society; what was it likely to be or to attain? Young Adams was studying chese problems while he was teaching the Worcester children the rudiments of an education. From a letter written to his kinsman, Nathan Webb, and published by Mr. Webb's son fifty years after, take the following as a sample of the young man's thinking at this time: "Soon after the reformation a few people came over into this new world for conscience's sake. Perhaps this apparently trivial incident may transfer the great seat of empire into America. It looks like it to me; for if we can remove the turbulent Gallicks, our people, according to the exact computations, will in another century become more

numerous than England itself. Should this be the case, since we have, I may say, all the naval stores of the nation in our hands, it will be easy to obtain the mastery of the seas, and then the united force of all Europe will not be able to subdue us. The only way to keep us from setting up for ourselves is to disunite us. Divide et impera. Keep us in distinct colonies, and then some great men in each colony, desiring the monarchy of the whole, they will destroy each other's influence and keep the country in equilibrio." This was written just before he was twenty years of age. This was twenty years before the revolution; and yet this youth was computing the growth and resources of America, the probable time before it would hold the balance of power against all Europe; the importance of the colonies being united, and, if united, the certainty that they would by and by set up for themselves. Here was the great statesman beginning to develop the philosophy of his statesmanship, while yet a youth teaching the children of a country village for his daily bread. How little he foresaw the outcome of his thinking, and yet how true to the common law that the character of the man is given shape before the boy is out of his teens. Washington at nineteen was a military leader; John Adams at nineteen was a political philosopher. The boy is the type of the man inwardly as well as outwardly. Immensely important is this truth to know and act upon in the training of youth.

In this same letter there are some noble sentiments on friendship. He says: "Friendship, I take it, is one of the distinguishing glories of man; and the creature that is insensible to its charms, though he may wear the shape of man, is unworthy of the character. In this, perhaps, we bear a nearer resemblance to unembodied intelligence than in anything else. From this I expect to receive the chief happiness of my future life." This indicates that he was as great in heart as he was in intellect. A biographer says of this letter: "It was a letter of an original and meditative mind; a mind as yet aided only by the acquisitions then attainable at Harvard college, but formed by nature for statesmanship of the highest order.”

Very soon the political part of it began to be fulfilled. Its fulfillment is not complete yet, but as a nation we are marching in the line of his foresight.

In a letter to his classmate, Charles Cushing, written the next April, he writes: "Upon common theatres indeed the applause of the audience it more to the actors than their own approbation. But upon the stage of life, while conscience claps, let the world hiss. On the contrary, if conscience disapproves, the loudest applauses of the world are of but little value.

"We have, indeed, the liberty of choosing what character we shall sustain in this great and important drama. But to choose rightly, we should consider in what character we can do the most service to our fellow men as well as to ourselves. The man who lives wholly to himself is less worthy than the cattle in his barn."

Here is a recognition of conscience in the conduct of life which would be creditable to any divine in any age. Indeed, it was written in reply to his friend's counsel that he should enter the ministry for his life's work. His father desired it; his own heart almost persuaded him to it; yet he had become such an original thinker on all questions, and so profoundly believed in the mind's liberty and power and duty of choice that he finally decided in favor of the law as the field in which he could be most useful to himself and the world. In this letter to Charles Cushing there is this postscript: "There is a story about town that I am an Armenian." Those were the days of dominant Calvinism. In this same letter he had indicated that the divine "should revere his own understanding more than the decrees of councils or the sentiments of fathers," and "should resolutely discharge the duties of his station according to the dictates of his mind." This power and necessity of original thinking on all subjects that was so imperious in him led him to turn from the ministry, though as he said in his diary: "My inclination, I think, was to preach." Under the same date he says: "Although the reason of my quitting divinity was my opinion concerning some disputed points, I hope I shall not give