John Quincy Adams’ Mother.
“Twelve or fifteen years ago,” says Ex-Governor Briggs, “I left Washington three or four weeks in the spring. While at home, I possessed myself of the letters of Mr. Adams’ mother, and read them with exceeding interest. I remember an expression in one of the letters addressed to her son, while yet a boy twelve years of age, in Europe. Says she, ‘I would rather see you laid in your grave than you should grow up a profane and graceless boy.’ “After returning to Washington, I went over, and said to Mr. Adams, ‘I have found out who made you.’” “‘What do you mean?’ said he. “I replied, ‘I have been reading the letters of your mother.’” “‘If I had spoken that dear name to some little boy who had been for weeks away from his dear mother, his eye could not have flashed more brightly, or his face glowed more quickly, than did the eye and face of that venerable old man when I pronounced the name of his mother. He stood up, in his peculiar manner, and emphatically said, “‘Yes, Mr. Briggs; all that is good in me, I owe to my mother.’” “‘Oh, what a testimony was that from this venerable man to his mother, who had in his remembrance all the stages of his manhood! “All that is good in me, I owe to my mother.’” “‘Mothers, think of this when your bright-eyed little boy is about. Mothers make the first impressions upon their children; and these are last to be effaced.’”