The late President Adams used to draw much amusement, in his latest years at Quincy, from the accurate delineation of Washington manners and character, which was regularly transmitted, for a considerable period, in letters from her pen. And if, as time advances, she becomes gradually less able to devote her sense of sight to reading and writing, her practice of the more homely virtues of manual industry, so highly commended in the final chapter of the book of Solomon, still amuses the declining days of her varied career.” Mrs. Adams was the “lady of the White House” when, in 1825, Lafayette visited the United States, and, at the invitation of the President, spent the last weeks of his stay at the “Executive Mansion,” from which, on the seventh of September, he bade his pathetic farewell to the land of his adoption. Notwithstanding the rare qualities of mind and heart which she brought to it, and the popularity which she attained in it, her son writes: “Her residence in the President’s house I have always considered as the period she enjoyed the least during the public career of my father. All this appears more or less in her letters, and especially in a species of irregular diary which she kept for some time at Washington, for the benefit of my grandfather, John Adams, then living at Quincy, and of her brother, who was residing in New Orleans.” Mrs. Adams died May 14, 1852, and was buried beside her husband, in the family burying ground at Quincy, Massachusetts. * * * * * In mental attainments, there was an absolute contrast between Mrs. Adams and Rachel Donaldson, the next President’s wife. Mrs. Andrew Jackson never entered the President’s house in visible form, for she had passed from earth before her husband became the Chief Magistrate of the Nation. Yet it is doubtful if the wife of any other President ever exerted so powerful and positive an influence over an administration in life as did she in death. Born and reared on the frontiers of civilization, her educational advantages had been most scanty, and she never mastered more than the simplest rudiments of knowledge. Yet, looking on her pictured face, it is easy to fathom and define the power which, through life and beyond the grave, held the master will of the husband who loved her in sweet abeyance. It was a power purely womanly—the affectional force of a woman of exalted moral nature and deep affections. It was impossible that such a woman should use arts to win love, and equally impossible that she should not be loved. Men would love her instinctively, through the best and highest in their natures.