. Library of the world's best literature, ancient and modern. or his coun-try, sacrificing his profession, giving upthe hope of wealth, writes her: — <^I believe my children will thinkthat I might as well have labored a little, night and day; for theirbenefit. But I will tell them that I studied and labored to procurea free constitution of government for them to solace themselvesunder; and if they do not prefer this to ample fortune, to ease andelegance, they are not my children. They shall live upon thin diet,wear mean clothes, and work hard with cheerful hearts and freespirits, or they ma
. Library of the world's best literature, ancient and modern. or his coun-try, sacrificing his profession, giving upthe hope of wealth, writes her: — <^I believe my children will thinkthat I might as well have labored a little, night and day; for theirbenefit. But I will tell them that I studied and labored to procurea free constitution of government for them to solace themselvesunder; and if they do not prefer this to ample fortune, to ease andelegance, they are not my children. They shall live upon thin diet,wear mean clothes, and work hard with cheerful hearts and freespirits, or they may be the children of the earth, or of no one,for me.* In old Weymouth, one of those quiet Massachusetts towns, half-hidden among the umbrageous hills, where the meeting-house and theschool-house rose before the settlers cabins were built, where the oneelm-shaded main street stretches its breadth between two lines ofself-respecting, isolated frame houses, each with its grassy dooryard,its lilac bushes, its fresh-painted offices, its decorous wood-pile laid. ABIGAIL ADAMS ABIGAIL ADAMS 85 with architectural balance and symmetry, — there, in the dignifiedparsonage, on the nth of November, 1744, was born to Parson WilliamSmith and Elizabeth his wife, Abigail, the second of three beautifuldaughters. Her mother was a Quincy, of a distinguished line, andher mother was a Norton, of a strain not less honorable. Nor werethe Smiths unimportant. In that day girls had little instruction. Abigail says of herself, inone of her letters: — ^> But the household was mother knew the British Poets ^ and all the literature of QueenAnnes Augustan age. Her beloved grandmother Quincy, at MountWollaston, seems to have had both learning and wisdom, and to herfather she owed the sense of fun, the shrewdness, the clever way of
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