It might be, that a man with a strong constitution could catch a cyclone
and ride it bareback across the United States and then have a fresh one
ready to ride back again, but to catch a buffalo bull in the full flush
of manhood, as it were, and retain his tail while he crossed three
reservations and two mountain ranges, requires great tenacity of purpose
and unusual mental equipoise.
Remember, I do not regard the story I refer to as false, at least I do
not wish to be so understood. I simply say that it recounts an incident
that is rather out of the ordinary. Let the gentle reader lie down and
have a Jack-rabbit driven across his face, for instance. The J. Rabbit
is as likely to brush your face with his brief and erect tail as
the buffalo would be. Then carefully note how rapidly and promptly
instantaneous you must be. Then closely attend to the manner in which
you abruptly and almost simultaneously, have not retained the tail in
your memory.
A few people may have successfully seized the grieved and startled
buffalo by the tail, but they are not here to testify to the
circumstances. They are dead, abnormally and extremely dead.
JOHN ADAMS.
After viewing the birthplace of the Adamses out at Quincy I felt more
reconciled to my own birthplace. Comparing the house in which I was
born with those in which other eminent philanthropists and high-priced
statesmen originated, I find that I have no reason to complain. Neither
of the Adamses were born in a larger house than I was, and for general
tone and eclat of front yard and cook-room on behind, I am led to
believe that I have the advantage.
John Adams was born before John Quincy Adams. A popular idea seems to
prevail in some sections of the Union that inasmuch as John Q. was bald
headed, he was the elder of the two; but I inquired about that while on
the ground where they were both born, and ascertained from people who
were familiar with the circumstances, that John was born first.
John Adams was the second president of the United States. He was a
lawyer by profession, but his attention was called to politics by the
passage of the stamp act in 1765. He was one of the delegates who
represented Massachusetts in the first Continental Congress, and about
that time he wrote a letter in which he said: "The die is now cast; I
have passed the rubicon. Sink or swim, live or die, survive or perish
with my country is my unalterable determination." Some have expressed
the opinion that "the rubicon" alluded to by Mr. Adams in this letter
was a law which he had succeeded in getting passed; but this is not
true. The idea of passing the rubicon first originated with Julius
CÊsar, a foreigner of some note who flourished a good deal B. C.
In June, 1776, Mr. Adams seconded a resolution, moved by Richard Henry
Lee, that the United States "are, and of right ought to be, free and
independent." Whenever Mr. Adams could get a chance to whoop for liberty
now and forever, one and inseparable, he invariably did so.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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