He was unostentatious and almost always walked, whether for visiting, business or exercise. At Quincy he used to go up President's Hill to meet the sun from the sea, and sometimes walked to the residence of his son in Boston before breakfast. Regularly, before the hour of the daily sessions of Congress, he was seen wending his quiet way towards the Capitol, seldom or never using, in the worst of weather, a carriage. He stayed one night to a late hour, listening to a debate in the Senate on the expunging resolution. As he was starting for home in the face of a fierce snow-storm, and in snow a foot deep, a gentleman proposed to conduct him to his house. "I thank you, sir, for your kindness," said he, "but I do not need the service of any one. I am somewhat advanced in life, but not yet, by the blessing of God, infirm, or what Dr. Johnson would call 'superfluous;' and you may recollect what old Adam says in 'As you Like it'-- "'For in my youth I never did apply Hot and rebellious liquors in my blood.'" While he was President, the writer was once sitting in the drawing-room of a highbred lady in Boston. A hat not very new glanced under the window sill. The owner rung at the door; and not finding the gentleman at home, continued his walk. A servant entered and presented the card of JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. "I do wonder," exclaimed the lady, "that the President of the United States will go about in such a manner!" His apparel was always plain, scrupulously neat, and reasonably well worn. It was made for the comfort of the wearer, who asked not of the fashions. When he retired from the Presidency, he resolved to pass the remainder of his days under the paternal roof and the beloved shades. He anticipated and desired nothing but quiet, animated by the excitements of intellectual and rural occupations. He had before him the congenial task, to which he had long aspired, of dispensing the treasures of wisdom contained in the unwritten life and unpublished writings of his father. He was ready to impart of his own inexhaustible wealth of experience, observation and erudition, to any one capable of receiving. It takes much to reconcile a thoughtful mind to the loss of what would have been gained by the proposed employment of his leisure. And we had much. Had the record of his public life, ample and honorable as it was, been now closed, those pages on which patriots, philanthropists and poets will for ever dwell with gratitude and delight, would have been wanting. Hitherto he had done remarkably well what many others, with a knowledge of precedents and of routine and with habits of industry, might have done, if not as well, yet acceptably. He was now called to do what no other man in the Republic had strength and heart to attempt.