He had been asked to enlist in the growing army of temperance, and discourse on that cause, so deeply cherished by every well wisher of our country.  And he would cheerfully speak; but other and more devoted men had occupied the field, and what was left for him to say on temperance?  In passing through Catholic Lower Canada he saw a column erected to the Virgin Mary, in gratitude for her promotion of the temperance cause.  If indeed the blessed Virgin did lend her aid to that great work, it would almost win him to worship at her shrine, although he belonged to that class of people who rejected the invocation of saints.

He felt, therefore, that he had no subject on which to address them, but himself and his own public life.  The experience of an old man, related by himself, would, he feared, be more irksome than profitable.

“What, then, am I to say?  I am summoned here to speak, and to reply to what has been said to me by my respected friend, your late Chief Magistrate.  And what is the theme he has given me?  It is myself.  And what can I say on such a subject?  To know that he entertains, or that you entertain for me the sentiments he has expressed, absolutely overpowers me.  I cannot go on.  The only answer I can make, is a declaration, that during my public service, now protracted to nearly the age of eighty, I have endeavored to serve my country honestly and faithfully.  How imperfectly I have done this, none seem so sensible as myself.  I must stop.  I can only repeat thanks, thanks, thanks to you, one and all, and implore the blessings of God upon you and your children.”

At the conclusion of this reply, Mr. Adams was introduced to a large number of the ladies and gentlemen assembled in the church.  He then returned to the American Hotel, where he remained an hour, receiving the visits of the citizens of the adjoining towns.  At 11 o’clock the Auburn Guards escorted Mr. Adams and the committee, followed by a large procession, to the car-house.  Accompanied by Gov.  Seward, Judge Miller, Hon. Christopher Morgan, the committee, Auburn Guards, and a number of the citizens of Auburn, he was conveyed in an extra train of cars, in an hour and five minutes, to Syracuse.

At Syracuse, at Utica, at Albany, the same spontaneous outgushing manifestations of respect and affection met him that had hitherto attended his journey in every populous place through which he passed.  In his reply to the address of Mr. Barnard, at Albany, he concluded in the following words:—­

“Lingering as I am on the stage of public life, and, as many of you may think, lingering beyond the period when nature calls for repose—­while I remain in the station which I now occupy in the Congress of the United States, if you, my hearers, as an assembly, or if anyone among you, as an individual, have any object or purpose to promote, or any end to secure that he believes can in any way advance his interests or increase his happiness, then, in the