“’The sun is dressed in brightest beams,
    To give thy honors to the day.’

“And may it prove an auspicious prelude to each ensuing season.  You have this day to declare yourself head of a nation.  ’And now, O Lord, my God, thou hast made thy servant ruler over the people.  Give unto him an understanding heart, that he may know how to go out and come in before this great people; that he may discern between good and bad.  For who is able to judge this thy so great a people?’ were the words of a royal sovereign; and not less applicable to him who is invested with the chief magistracy of a nation, though he wear not a crown nor the robes of royalty.

“My thoughts and my meditations are with you, though personally absent; and my petitions to Heaven are, that ’the things which make for peace may not be hidden from your eyes.’  My feelings are not those of pride or ostentation, upon the occasion.  They are solemnized by a sense of the obligations, the important trusts, and numerous duties connected with it.  That you may be enabled to discharge them with honor to yourself, with justice and impartiality to your country, and with satisfaction to this great people, shall be the daily prayer of your A.A.”

From her husband’s retirement from the Presidency in 1801, to the close of her life in 1818, Mrs. Adams remained constantly at Quincy.  Cheerful, contented, and happy, she devoted her last years, in that rural seclusion, to the reciprocities of friendship and love, to offices of kindness and charity, and, in short, to all those duties which tend to ripen the Christian for an exchange of worlds.

But it would be doing injustice to her character and leaving one of her noblest deeds unrecorded, to close without mentioning the influence for good which she exerted over Mr. Adams, and her part in the work of making him what he was.  That he was sensible of the benignant influence of wives, may be gathered from the following letter, which was addressed to Mrs. Adams from Philadelphia, on the 11th of August, 1777: 

“I think I have sometimes observed to you in conversation, that upon examining the biography of illustrious men you will generally find some female about them, in the relation of mother or wife or sister, to whose instigation a great part of their merit is to be ascribed.  You will find a curious example of this in the case of Aspasia, the wife of Pericles.  She was a woman of the greatest beauty and the first genius.  She taught him, it is said, his refined maxims of policy, his lofty imperial eloquence, nay, even composed the speeches on which so great a share of his reputation was founded.

“I wish some of our great men had such wives.  By the account in your last letter, it seems the women in Boston begin to think themselves able to serve their country.  What a pity it is that our generals in the northern districts had not Aspasias to their wives!

“I believe the two Howes have not very great women to their wives.  If they had, we should suffer more from their exertions than we do.  This is our good fortune.  A smart wife would have put Howe in possession of Philadelphia a long time ago.”