The materials for preparing the memoirs of those American ladies whose virtues were conspicuous, and whose position in society imposed upon them great duties, and gave them an extensive influence in their day, are, in general, exceedingly scanty. Happily, the piety of a descendant has, in the present case, supplied the deficiency; and in a mode the most satisfactory. We are here not only made acquainted with the everyday life and actions as they were exhibited to the world around, but are admitted to the inmost recesses of the heart, and all its hopes and feelings are laid open to us. There are few who could bear such an exposure; but in respect to the subject of our present sketch, a nearer acquaintance and more rigid scrutiny serve only to increase our veneration, and to confirm the verdict which her contemporaries had passed upon her. Abigail Smith, afterwards Mrs. Adams, was born on the 11th of November, 1744. She was the daughter of the Rev. William Smith, the minister of a small Congregational church in Weymouth, Massachusetts, and was descended on both sides from the genuine stock of the Pilgrims. The cultivation of the female mind was neglected in the last century, not merely as a matter of indifference, but of positive principle; female learning was a subject of ridicule, and "female education," as Mrs. Adams tells us, "in the best families, went no further than writing and arithmetic; in some, and rare instances, music and dancing." But Mrs. Adams did not have an opportunity of receiving even the ordinary instruction. She was never sent to school, the delicate state of her health forbidding it. But this is hardly to be considered matter of regret, for constant intercourse with her pious and talented relations had an influence upon her character of even greater value than the learning of the schools. The lessons which made the deepest impression upon her mind were imbibed from her maternal grandmother, the wife of Colonel John Quincy. "I have not forgotten," says Mrs. Adams, to her daughter, in 1795, "the excellent lessons which I received from my grandmother, at a very early period of life. I frequently think they made a more durable impression upon my mind than those which I received from my own parents. Whether it was owing to the happy method of mixing instruction and amusement together, or from an inflexible adherence to certain principles, the utility of which I could not but see and approve when a child, I know not; but maturer years have rendered them oracles of wisdom to me. I love and revere her memory; her lively, cheerful disposition animated all around her, while she edified all by her unaffected piety. This tribute is due to the memory of those virtues, the sweet remembrance of which will flourish, though she has long slept with her ancestors."