Mr.Adams, in reply, spoke of the scenes amidst which he had passed his early youth, and of the influence which they exerted in forming his character and shaping his purposes.

"In 1775," said he, "the minute men from a hundred towns in the province were marching, at a moment's warning, to the scene of opening war.

Many of them called at my father's house in Quincy, and received the hospitality of John Adams.

All were lodged in the house which the house would contain; others in the barns, and wherever they could find a place.

There were then in my father's kitchen some dozen or two of pewter spoons; and I well recollect going into the kitchen and seeing some of the men engaged in running those spoons into bullets for the use of the troops! Do you wonder," said he, "that a boy of seven years of age, who witnessed this scene, should be a patriot ?" In the fall of the same year, Mr.Adams received an invitation from the Cincinnati Astronomical Society, to visit that city, and assist in the ceremony of laying the corner stone of an observatory, to be erected on an eminence called Mount Ida.