For twenty-five years Mr. Spear has been doing little else but studying Colonial history, and making love to old ladies who own clocks and skillets given them by their great-grandmammas.  There is no doubt that Spear has dictated clauses in a hundred wills devising that William G. Spear, Custodian of the Quincy Historical Society, shall have snuffers and biscuit-molds.

At first, Mr. Spear collected for his own amusement and benefit, but the trouble grew upon him until it became chronic, and one fine day he realized that he was not immortal, and when he should die, all his collection, which had taken years to accumulate, would be scattered.  And so he founded the Quincy Historical Society, incorporated by a perpetual charter, with Charles Francis Adams, grandson of John Quincy Adams, as first president.

Then, the next thing was to secure the cottage where John and Abigail Adams began housekeeping, and where John Quincy was born.  This house has been in the Adams family all these years and been rented to the firm of Tom, Dick and Harry, and any of their tribe who would agree to pay ten dollars a month for its use and abuse.  Just across the road from the cottage lives a fine old soul by the name of John Crane.  Mr. Crane is somewhere between seventy and a hundred years old, but he has a young heart, a face like Gladstone and a memory like a copy-book.  Mr. Crane was on very good terms with John Quincy Adams, knew him well and had often seen him come here to collect rent.  He told me that during his recollection the Adams place had been occupied by full forty families.  But now, thanks to “Bill Spear,” it is no longer for rent.

The house has been raised from the ground, new sills placed under it, and while every part—­scantling, rafter, joist, crossbeam, lath and weatherboard—­of the original house has been retained, it has been put in such order that it is no longer going to ruin.

From the ample stores of his various antiquarian depositories Mr. Spear has refurnished it; and with a ripe knowledge and rare good taste and restraining imagination, the cottage is now shown to us as a Colonial farmhouse of the year Seventeen Hundred Fifty.  The wonder to me is that Mr. Spear, being human, did not move his “secondhand-shop” down here and make of the place a curiosity-shop.  But he has done better.

As you step across the doorsill and pass from the little entry into the “living-room,” you pause and murmur, “Excuse me.”  For there is a fire on the hearth, the tea-kettle sings softly, and on the back of a chair hangs a sunbonnet.  And over there on the table is an open Bible, and on the open page is a pair of spectacles and a red, crumpled handkerchief.  Yes, the folks are at home:  they have just stepped into the next room—­perhaps are eating dinner.  And so you sit down in an old hickory chair, or in the high settle that stands against the wall by the fireplace, and wait, expecting every moment that the kitchen-door will creak on its wooden hinges, and Abigail, smiling and gentle, will enter to greet you.  Mr. Spear understands, and, disappearing, leaves you to your thoughts—­and June’s.