Cassius Smith appears to have died in 1876, whereupon Adams returned to Brooklyn[2] and became a teacher in the Juvenile High School.

[1] Her enthusiasm as a student, which she always had, found its best result in her interpretations of Shakespeare, and of reading under her able guidance his delineations of character.

[1] On November 7, 1883, she married Alfred Smith Barnes, a wealthy man, who was a prominent publisher and philanthropist.

During this marriage, she was personally concerned in aiding several worthy institutions which had won her favor — prominent among them being the Home for Incurables and St. John's Protestant Episcopal Hospital, in Brooklyn.

As Mrs. Adams, her helpfulness was chiefly manifested in behalf of worthy students, both at Ithaca and Madison, who were struggling against financial odds.

"[3] Adams was a poet whose numerous odes and sonnets won the commendation of several distinguished English and American critics.

What property she had remaining at her death — not large, for her interest in the Barnes estate was in the form of an annuity — was, like her husband's, willed to the University of Wisconsin, for whose welfare she strove throughout the last decade of her life.