me in the most affectionate terms. Enjoin it upon him never to disgrace his mother, and to behave worthily of his father." She writes to her boy, urging him "to adhere to those religious sentiments and principles, which were early instilled into your mind, and remember that you are accountable to your Maker for all your words and actions. Great learning and superior abilities, should you ever possess them, will be of little value, and small estimation, unless virtue, honor, truth, and integrity are added to them. Dear as you are to me, I would much rather you should have found a grave in the ocean you have crossed, than see you an immoral, profligate, or graceless child."

Mrs. Adams possessed more talent for practical business affairs, than is common among her sex. During her husband's absence in Europe she managed his money matters at home, which at that time was no easy task. Continental money had greatly depreciated. For a while her means of living were very limited; indeed her family suffered want. "I blush whilst I give you the price current," she writes to her husband. "All meat from a dollar to eight shillings a pound; corn twenty-five dollars a bushel, rye thirty, flour two hundred dollars a hundred pounds; potatoes ten dollars a bushel. I have studied, and do study every method of economy; otherwise a mint of money would not support a family. I could not board our sons under forty dollars a week at school. * * * We have been greatly distressed for grain. I scarcely know the looks or taste of biscuit, or flour for these four months." Afterwards meat sold for eight, and butter for twelve dollars a pound. Corn one hundred and twenty dollars, and rye one hundred and eight a bushel. It took seventy dollars of Continental money to buy one dollar of specie. Well might good Mrs. Adams worry to make ends meet in her family, and that too while her husband was Ambassador to one of the greatest nations of Europe.

In spite of the gay court life at Paris, Mr. Adams felt concerned for the comforts and society of his family. He requests his wife and children to live with him abroad. The plain daughter of Parson Smith, shrinks from the gay, frivolous Parisian society, in which the representatives of foreign nations must move. She says that her education did not adapt her for this. That her highest ambition and delight was to be an affectionate domestic wife, seeing after her well ordered home. "A mere American, as I am, unacquainted with the etiquette of courts, taught to say the thing I mean, and to wear my heart in my countenance—I am sure I should make an awkward figure; and then it would mortify my pride, if I should be thought to disgrace you." Thus wrote she to Mr. Adams.

But she must obey her husband. The accommodations of the ship "Active," in which she made the voyage, were not to her liking; very different from the floating palaces, in which people small and great now voyage the seas. Her family were stowed away in a small dirty room. She says: "The cook was a great, dirty, lazy negro, with no more knowledge of cookery, than a savage; nor any kind of order in the distribution of his dishes; but on they came, higgledy-piggledy, with a leg of pork all bristly; a quarter of an hour afterwards a pudding; or perhaps, a pair of roast fowls first of all, and then will follow, one by one, a piece of beef, and when dinner is nearly completed, a plate of potatoes. Such a fellow is a real imposition upon the passengers. But gentlemen know but little about the matter, and if they can get enough to eat five times a day, all goes well."

In Europe she fares better than was expected. Her long absent boy has greatly changed; nothing but the eyes look like his former self. Among a crowd of strangers, she fails to recognize him, until he exclaims: "O my mamma, and my dear sister." Then these three go through the tender scene usual on such occasions, in the presence of the gaping crowd. Although ignorant of the language, she seems to get along in France, with comparative comfort. The wife of Lafayette received her, "with the freedom of an old acquaintance;" took her by the hand and kissed her on each cheek. "She presented me to her mother and sister, who were present with her, all sitting in her bed-room. One of the ladies was knitting. The marquise (Lafayette) was in a chintz gown"-"a middle-sized lady, sprightly and agreeable, very plainly dressed, the paint in her face not exactly put on right." Later, she dined with Mrs. Adams, to whom an American lady whispered, aside: "Good heavens! how awfully she is dressed!" Afterwards, the Adams family lived at London, whither his country sent him on a certain mission. They were made to feel British hatred of America. Once in two weeks they were expected to attend the circles of the queen. Her dresses she could wear only once during the same season, and nowhere but at court. Needing so many, she ordered them as inexpensive as possible. Her dress consisted of "white lutestring, covered, and full trimmed with white crape, festooned with lilac ribbon and mock point lace, over a hoop of enormous extent; a narrow train of three yards, which is put into a ribbon on the left side. Ruffle cuffs, treble lace ruffles, a very dress cap, with long lace lappets, two white plumes, and a blond lace handkerchief. Two pearl pins in my hair, ear-rings and necklace of the same kind."

They are presented to the king and queen; two hundred persons are present, placed in a circle. The royal family must pass around

the whole circle, and speak to each one," very prudently in a whisper," "small talk," she calls it. The king is a personable man, but with a red face and white eyebrows. The queen's face is the same. When the king came to me, Lord Onslow said, "Mrs. Adams;" upon which, I drew off my right hand glove, and his majesty saluted my left cheek, then asked me if I had taken a walk to-day. I could have told his majesty, that I had been all the morning preparing to wait upon him; but I replied, "No, sire." "Why don't you love walking?" says he. I answered that I was "rather indolent, in that respect."

Two hours later, the queen reached her, around the other way of the circle. Both were embarrassed. "Mrs. Adams, have you got into your house? Pray, how do you like the situation of it?" the queen inquired. Just such talk, as ladies all over the civilized world would indulge in. The ladies at court, she says, were "in general, very plain, ill-shaped, and ugly; but don't you tell anybody that I say so. The observation did not hold good, that fine feathers make fine birds."

She owns that she never felt herself "in a more contemptible situation," than when she stood four hours together for a gracious. smile from majesty. That she received a kiss from the king, she deems a dignified honor; ordinarily ladies do not find this boon every day.

She soon tires of these gayeties, and longs for her cottage home in America. "The birds of Europe had not half the melody of those at home, the fruit was not half so sweet, the flowers half so fragrant, the manners half so pure, nor the people half so virtuous."

After three years spent abroad, she returns home. John Adams becomes Vice President of the United States. The "court" of General Washington is more to her taste. She was in tender sympathy with her great husband; keenly felt his trials and triumphs. When rising to the rulership of the Republic, she prays God to give him an understanding heart, "that he may know how to go out and come in before this great people." In the height of his fame, she adhered to the simple habits of youth. Rose at six, kindled her own fire, called the servants two and three times, before they rose in the morning, superintends the establishment. She was cheerful and contented to a good old age. In 1818 she fell asleep, eight years before the death of her husband.

Her son, John Quincy Adams, in the full tide of political glory, pauses and weeps at his mother's bier. "This is one of the severest afflictions to which human existence is liable," he exclaims: "Life is no longer to me what it was. My home is no

longer the abode of my mother. While she lived, whenever I returned to the paternal roof, I felt as if the joys and charms of childhood returned to make me happy; all was kindness and affection. One of the links which connected me with former ages is no more."

WOMAN IN THE CHURCH.

BY PERKIOMEN.

The woman of America is supposed to enjoy the fullest freedom in the sanctuary and at the altar. It does appear so. She has liberty to get her brain turned by religious excitements. Religion is allotted her as a field to romance in, at will. But, as Religion is a temper, not a pursuit or profession; a life, not an occupation, the result of her license herein tells lightly on her conduct and intellect. With all the fair show, the churches bind and gag woman, nevertheless. She dare not say a word, nor do a thing on principle, and from right; the little left her is, after all, of sufferance and indulgence. She is expected to attend the Lord's Day services, and that of the weekly meeting-even if man does not. She dare sit among the pews and listen-hear man's sayings. She dare offer of her husband's means to build churches; support the pastors; sustain the beneficiary institutions; teach in the Sunday-school; become a member of the Mite Society; join a sewing-circle, and marry a minister-if she be foolish enough to do so.

This is the extent of her religious charter, her entire "bill of rights." It is easy to see, that her admitted routine is but a series of "toleration acts," and not the result of premises deliberately laid, and consistently acted on, and out to their logical ends. Aside of man, her position is one of passivity throughout. She is an appendage to man's left arm-nothing more.

Where is the prestige with which she was clothed, in the early stages of Christianity? When yet at a tender age, she had been entrusted with the practice of purity and charity in their grandest meaning. The more aged and widowed visited the sick and imprisoned; the martyrs and confessors of the faith. They relieved the indigent, and practised hospitality. The more advanced were ordained deaconesses; by the imposition of hands, and included amongst the clergy. Their office was correlative to that of the Deacons as Deacons once were, and not as they now are―mere

clerical tax-gatherers and ushers. By them were performed all the deeds of mercy that applied to their sex. They visited and relieved poor women and their families; instructed the catechumens; led them to Baptism, and exhorted the novices. Down to the XIIth century the office existed, and had been subject to the jurisdiction of the Bishop, to whom the incumbents directly accounted for the manner in which they discharged the functions of their station.

Still further back, you read of women following Jesus more closely than the best of men; of women entertaining the wandering Apostles; of women worshiping in the Catacombs, and dying in the arena.

No doubt, there were people in Pagan Rome, who were scandalized at the unseemly boldness and immodesty of Christian women, who thus ministered publicly and officially; who stood in the amphitheatre; and who were torn to pieces for conscience' sake. But modesty had to succumb before faith and works, whilst the active and public status of Christian woman became the theme of the Church Fathers.

Further down, and nearer our own times, spring up convents, orders, sodalities, and sisterhoods-in all of which, woman resembles far more the charitable Dorcas, the hospitable Lydia, and the elect Lady of the Apostolic age, than the "woman of the period."

But what has become of woman's place in the Sanctuary and about the Altar? All shut up, let us say, to save her modesty! Men's hair stand on ends at the bare idea of her entering the Christian arena, in any earnest and heroic way. Anything beyond a silent Quaker worship for her, is already mannish. We are told, "Away with innovations!" as if there were any room left here for innovation. As if the Pagan creed had not already had its vestals, its priestesses, and its prophetic sibyls. As if Israel had not known the Prophetesses. Demur on the ground of novelty, and the case is lost.

Now, to plead for an emancipation of woman-an enfranchisement within the kingdom of Him, who had the Virgin Mary for His mother, should not fall strangely on our ears. It is but asking to have her rightful station re-opened to her, and to have her individual worth acknowledged. Even Paganism did so much, and was pleased with the result. The oldest church in Christendom but followed the precedents set by the religious systems of nature, and finds the order a success. Let a similar arrangement pervade all other associations of Christianity, in order that we may know the unmarried Christian woman otherwise, than as an "old maid" in order that we may find room to apply such strange words as: "The unmarried woman careth for the things of the