Soon afterward, Mr. Adams and family went to Boston to visit his father’s family, where he was the recipient of another public dinner: the last meeting with his mother on earth, it was one which he never forgot. It was gratifying to her sensitive nature to see him thus rising from one elevated position to another, and it soothed her aged heart beyond any power of expression. Many years of his life had been spent far away from her, and his absences were long and unbroken. She had always written regularly to him, and by example and precept endeavored to instil into his nature some portion of her own aspirations. When his talents had won for him this last position, she bowed her head and thanked God. Perhaps her spirit recognized his still higher promotion, and the natural conclusion, arrived at from former precedents, that by gradual ascent he would reach the place his father occupied, occurred to her. When she died at her home in Quincy, he was in Washington, busy with the manifold duties of his place, whither he had gone to reside permanently, in September, 1817. The performance of the duties of the State Department necessarily required a residence at Washington, and the manner in which Mr. Adams thought proper to devote himself to them, devolved upon his lady the entire task of making his house an agreeable resort to the multitudes of visitors who crowd to the capital on errands of business, or curiosity, or pleasure, from the various sections of the United States during the winter season. A large diplomatic corps from foreign countries, who feel themselves in more immediate relations with the Secretary of State, and a distinguished set of public men, not then divided by party lines in the manner which usually prevails, rendered the society of that time, and Mrs. Adams’ house where it most often congregated, among the most agreeable recorded in the social history of the capital. Much as it has been ridiculed since, the “era of good feeling” had some characteristics peculiar to itself. For an instant, sectional animosities relented, the tone of personal denunciation and angry crimination, too generally prevailing in extremes, yielded; and even where the jealous rivalry for political honors still predominated in the hearts of men, the easy polish of general society removed from casual spectators any sense of its roughness, or inconvenience from its impetuosity. Washington may have presented more brilliant spectacles since, but the rancor of party spirit has ever mingled its baleful force too strongly not to be perceptible in the personal relations which have existed between the most distinguished of our political men. The following letter, not before published, from Mrs. Adams to her father-in-law will be read with interest. She corresponded regularly during her life in Washington, with him, until his death, in 1826: TO JOHN ADAMS. “WASHINGTON, _16th April, 1819_.