In New England, as we have seen, the parental love and care for the little ones was at least as much a part of the father’s domestic activities as of the mother’s; unfortunately the men were in the majority as writers, and they generally wrote of what they themselves did for their children.  Abigail Adams was one of the exceptional women, and her letters have many a reference to the training of her famous son.  Writing to him while he was with his father in Europe in 1778, she said:  “My dear Son....  Let me enjoin it upon you to attend constantly and steadfastly to the precepts and instructions of your father, as you value the happiness of your mother and your own welfare.  His care and attention to you render many things unnecessary for me to write ... but the inadvertency and heedlessness of youth require line upon line and precept upon precept, and, when enforced by the joint efforts of both parents, will, I hope, have a due influence upon your conduct; for, dear as you are to me, I would much rather you should have found your grave in the ocean you have crossed, or that an untimely death crop you in your infant years, than see you an immoral profligate, or graceless child...."[98]

Such quotations should prove that home life in colonial days was no one-sided affair.  The father and the mother were on a par in matters of child training, and the influence of both entered into that strong race of men who, through long years of struggle and warfare, wrested civilization from savagery, and a new nation from an old one.  What a modern writer has written about Mrs. Adams might possibly be applicable to many a colonial mother who kept no record of her daily effort to lead her children in the path of righteousness and noble service:  “Mrs. Adams’s influence on her children was strong, inspiring, vital.  Something of the Spartan mother’s spirit breathed in her.  She taught her sons and daughter to be brave and patient, in spite of danger and privation.  She made them feel no terror at the thought of death or hardships suffered for one’s country.  She read and talked to them of the world’s history....  Every night, when the Lord’s prayer had been repeated, she heard him [John Quincey] say the ode of Collins beginning,

    ’How sleep the brave who sink to rest
    By all their country’s wishes blest.’"[99]

IX.  Tributes to Colonial Mothers

With such wives and mothers so common in the New World, it is but natural that many a high tribute to them should be found in the old records.  Not for any particular or exactly named trait are these women praised, but rather for that general, indescribable quality of womanliness—­that quality which men have ever praised and ever will praise.  Those noble words of Judge Sewall at the open grave of his mother are an epitome of the patience, the love, the sacrifice, and the nobility of motherhood:  “Jany. 4th, 1700-1....  Nathan Bricket taking in hand to fill the grave, I said, Forbear a little, and suffer