Mr. Adams carried with him into Congress all his previous habits of industry and close application to business.  He was emphatically a hard worker.  Few men spent more hours in the twenty-four in assiduous labor.  He would take no active part in any matter—­would engage in the discussion of no topic—­and would not commit himself on any question—­until he had sounded it to its nether depths, and explored all its ramifications, all its bearings and influences, and had thoroughly become master of the subject.  To gain this information no toil was too great, no application too severe.  It was in this manner that he was enabled to overwhelm with surprise his cotemporaries in Congress, by the profundity of his knowledge.  No subject could be started, no question discussed, on which he was not perfectly at home.  Without hesitation or mistake, he could pour forth a stream of facts, dates, names, places, accompanied with narrations, anecdotes, reflections and arguments, until the matter was thoroughly sifted and laid bare in all its parts and properties, to the understanding of the most casual observer.  The tenacity and correctness of his memory was proverbial.  Alas, for the man who questioned the correctness of his statements, his facts, or dates.  Sure discomfiture awaited him.  His mind was a perfect calendar, a store-house, a mine of knowledge, in relation to all past events connected with the history of his country and his age.

In connection with his other exemplary virtues, Mr. Adams was prompt, faithful, unwearied, in the discharge of all his public duties.  The oldest member of the House, he was at the same time the most punctual—­the first at his post; the last to retire from the labors of the day.  His practice in these respects could well put younger members to the blush.  While many others might be negligent in their attendance, sauntering in idleness, engaged in frivolous amusements, or even in dissipation, he was always at his post.  No call of the House was necessary—­no Sergeant-at-arms need be despatched—­to bring him within the Hall of Representatives.  He was the last to move an adjournment, or to adopt any device to consume time or neglect the public business for personal convenience or gratification.  In every respect he was a model legislator.  His example can be most profitably imitated by those who would arise to eminence in the councils of the nation.

“My seat was, for two years, by his side, and it would have scarcely more surprised me to miss one of the marble columns of the Hall from its pedestal than to see his chair empty. * * * I shall, perhaps, be pardoned for introducing here a slight personal recollection, which serves, in some degree, to illustrate his habits.  The sessions of the last two days of (I think) the twenty-third Congress, were prolonged, the one for nineteen, and the other for seventeen hours.  At the close of the last day’s session, he remained in the hall of the House the last seated