Thus wrote the venerable John Adams to his wife, in the sixty-fifth year of his age, and the last of his Presidency. A few years previous he had uttered the same sigh, nor is it infrequent in his letters. "I am weary, worn, and disgusted to death. I had rather chop wood, dig ditches, and make fence upon my poor little farm. Alas, poor farm! and poorer family! what have you lost that your country might be free! and that others might catch fish and hunt deer and bears at their ease!" This was written in the days when there was such a thing as genuine patriotism; when, as in the noble Greek and Roman years, there lived among us also noble men, who freely surrendered all that life offered them of sweet and splendid, to work for their fellows, and to exalt their country's state, content that old age should find them poor in fortune and broken in health, so only that integrity remained, and a serene conscience led them undisturbed to the end of life. Among these former glories of our Republic, the name of John Adams stands in the clearest sunlight of fame. No purer patriot ever lived. The names which dazzle us in history become no fables when read by his light; Plutarch tells no nobler story, records no greater claims; Athens and Sparta smile upon him from their starry places, and Rome holds out her great hand of fellowship to him--for there is no virtue which has lived that may not live again, and our own day shows that there has never been a political corruption so base as to despair of being emulated.