shall realize a more terrible scene still; I wish myself with you out of hearing, as I cannot assist them, but I hope to give you joy of Boston, even if it is in ruins before I send this away." But events were not ordered as she feared, and the result was more glorious than she dared hope. All the summer the army lay encamped around Boston, and in early fall her husband came home again, after an absence of nearly a year. Yet his coming brought her little satisfaction, since it was to announce the sad truth that he had been chosen Minister to France. Could he take his wife and little ones? was the oft-recurring question. A small and not very good vessel had been ordered to carry him: the British fleet knew this, and were on the watch to capture it. On every account it was deemed best he should go alone, but he finally concluded to take his eldest son, John Quincy Adams, to bear him company, and in February, 1778, sailed for Europe.
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
