The loneliness of the faithful wife can hardly be understood by those unacquainted with the horrors of war. Yet doubtless there are many, very many, who in the dark gloom of the civil war can record similar feelings of agony, and can trace a parallel in the solitary musings of this brave matron. The ordinary occupations of the female sex have ever confined them to a very limited sphere, and there is seldom an occasion when they can with propriety extend their exertions beyond the domestic hearth. Only through the imagination can they give unlimited scope to those powers which the world until recently has never understood, and which are even now but dimly defined. Had mankind given them the privileges of a liberal education, and freedom to carve their own destiny, to what dazzling heights would a mind so naturally gifted as Mrs. Adams’, have attained? Circumscribed as her lot was, she has left upon the pages of history an enviable record, and while Americans forget not to do honor to her husband’s zeal and greatness, her memory lends a richer perfume, and sheds a radiance round the incidents of a life upon which she wielded so beneficial an influence. Ofttimes weather-bound and compelled to remain indoors for days, with no society save her children and domestics, it is not strange that she should be lonely. Nor could her mind dwell upon any pleasing anticipations for the future. Her husband three thousand miles away, a hostile army encompassing the country, poor and forlorn, she yet so managed and controlled her little estate, that it served to support her, and in old age, to prove the happy asylum of her honored family. Mr. Adams knew her exposed condition, yet trusted to her judgment to protect herself and little ones. On a former occasion he had written to her “in case of danger to fly to the woods,” and now he could only reiterate the same advice, at the same time feeling that she was strong and resolute to sustain herself. Six months passed, and Mrs. Adams writes to him: “I have never received a syllable from you or my dear son, and it is five months since I had an opportunity of conveying a line to you. Yet I know not but you are less a sufferer than you would be to hear from us, to know our distresses, and yet be unable to relieve them. The universal cry for bread to a humane heart is painful beyond description.” Mr. Adams returned to his family after an absence of eighteen months, but no sooner was he established in his happy home, than he was ordered to Great Britain to negotiate a peace. Two of his sons accompanied him on this trip. He went over night to Boston to embark early next day, and the sad heart left behind again, found relief in the following touching words: “My habitation, how disconsolate it looks! my table, I sit down to it, but cannot swallow my food! Oh, why was I born with so much sensibility, and why, possessing it, have I so often been called to struggle with it? Were I sure you would not be gone, I could not