Through fiery opposition, John Quincy Adams was elected President. From the time she became mistress of the President’s house, failing health inclined Mrs. Adams to seek seclusion, but she still continued to preside at public receptions. Her vivacity and pleasing manners did much to warm the chill caused by Mr. Adams’ apathy or apparent coldness. Those who knew him, declared that he had the warmest heart and the deepest sympathies, but he had an unfortunate way of hiding them. It is told that when he was candidate for the Presidency, his friends persuaded him to go to a cattle show. Among the persons who ventured to address him, was a respectable farmer who impulsively exclaimed: “Mr. Adams, I am very glad to see you. My wife, when she was a gal, lived in your father’s family; you were then a little boy, and she has often combed your head.” “Well,” said Mr. Adams, in a harsh voice, “I suppose she combs yours now?” The poor farmer slunk back extinguished. If he gave John Quincy his vote, he was more magnanimous than the average citizen of to-day would be to so rude a candidate. A writer of her time speaks of Mrs. Adams’ “enchanting, elegant and intellectual _régime_,” declaring that it should give tone to the whole country. Her fine culture, intellectual tastes, and charming social qualities, combined to attract about her a circle of rare and distinguished women. Among these were Mrs. Richard Rush, Mrs. Van Rensselaer, the wife of the Patroon, and Mrs. Edward Livingston. Notwithstanding the opposition of her husband’s politics, Mrs. Livingston was Mrs. Adams’ most intimate friend; a lady whom any land might be proud to claim, and whose memory lives a perpetual honor to womanhood. Mrs. Adams’ son, Charles Francis Adams, writing of his mother in 1839, says: “The attractions of great European capitals, and the dissipations consequent upon high official stations at home, though continued through that part of her life when habits become the most fixed, have done nothing to change the natural elegance of her manners, nor the simplicity of her tastes.... To the world, Mrs. Adams presents a fine example of the possibility of retiring from the circles of fashion, and the external fascinations of life, in time still to retain a taste for the more quiet, though less showy attractions of the domestic hearth. A strong literary taste, which has caused her to read much, and a capacity for composition in prose and verse, have been resources for her leisure moments; not with a view to that exhibition which renders such accomplishments too often fatal to the more delicate shades of feminine character, but for her own gratification, and that of a few relatives and friends.