sound judgments on the subject of daughters-in-law which human
nature, since the fall of Eve, made Adams helpless to realize.
Being three thousand miles away from his mother, and equally far
in love, he married Louisa in London, July 26, 1797, and took her
to Berlin to be the head of the United States Legation. During
three or four exciting years, the young bride lived in Berlin;
whether she was happy or not, whether she was content or not,
whether she was socially successful or not, her descendants did
not surely know; but in any case she could by no chance have
become educated there for a life in Quincy or Boston. In 1801 the
overthrow of the Federalist Party drove her and her husband to
America, and she became at last a member of the Quincy household,
but by that time her children needed all her attention, and she
remained there with occasional winters in Boston and Washington,
till 1809. Her husband was made Senator in 1803, and in 1809 was
appointed Minister to Russia. She went with him to St.
Petersburg, taking her baby, Charles Francis, born in 1807; but
broken-hearted at having to leave her two older boys behind. The
life at St. Petersburg was hardly gay for her; they were far too
poor to shine in that extravagant society; but she survived it,
though her little girl baby did not, and in the winter of
1814-15, alone with the boy of seven years old, crossed Europe
from St. Petersburg to Paris, in her travelling-carriage, passing
through the armies, and reaching Paris in the Cent Jours after
Napoleon's return from Elba. Her husband next went to England as
Minister, and she was for two years at the Court of the Regent.
In 1817 her husband came home to be Secretary of State, and she
lived for eight years in F Street, doing her work of entertainer
for President Monroe's administration. Next she lived four
miserable years in the White House. When that chapter was closed