Mr. Hoar answered: "It
seems to me, Mr. Adams, there is but one thing in the world
sillier than Masonry. That is Anti-Masonry."
Mr. Hoar used to relate with some amusement a dialogue he
had with a shrewd and witty old lawyer named Josiah Adams,
who shared the old Federalist dislike of his namesake, John
Quincy Adams. My father was talking quite earnestly in a
gathering of Middlesex lawyers and said: "I believe John Quincy
Adams means to be a Christian." "When?" inquired Josiah.
But I cannot draw the portraiture of this noble and stately
figure. George Herbert did it perfectly, long ago, in his
poem, "Constancy."
Old Dr. Lyman Beecher, the foremost champion in his day of
the old Orthodoxy, spent his life in combating what he deemed
the pestilent Unitarian heresy. He was the most famous preacher
in the country. Mr. Hoar was a pillar of Unitarianism. Yet
the Doctor came to know and honor his old antagonist. He
read in the Boston papers, late Saturday evening, that Mr.
Hoar was dying at Concord. Early Sunday morning before daybreak
he started, with his son-in-law, Professor Stowe, and drove
twenty miles to Concord.
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