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efforts in this direction were soon to be relieved by events which destined him to spend years in foreign countries.

The absence of his father furnished the unavoidable opportunity to young Adams for the early development of his inherited faculty to write letters, and the change about to occur in his fortunes helped to establish him in his life-long habit of placing on paper the events in which he was concerned, a habit often of no little annoyance to some of his contemporaries.

The following letter to his father is one of his first efforts in that way, and, considering his age, it must be deemed very remarkable :

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"DEAR SIR,-I love to receive letters very well, much better than I love to write them. I make but a poor figure at composition; my head is much too fickle. My thoughts are running after birds'-eggs, play, and trifles, till I get vexed with myself. Mamma has a troublesome task to keep me steady, and I own I am ashamed of myself. I have but just entered the third volume of Smollett, though I had designed to have got half through it by this time. I have determined this week to be more diligent, as Mr. Thaxter will be absent at court, and I can not pursue my other studies. I have set myself a stint, and determine to read the third volume half out. If I can but keep my resolution I will write again at the end of the week, and give a better account of myself. I wish, sir, you would give me some instructions with regard to my time, and advise me how to proportion my studies and my play, in writing, and I will keep them by me and endeavor to follow them. I am, dear sir, with a present determination of growing better,

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"P. S.-Sir, if you will be so good as to favor me with a blank-book I will transcribe the most remarkable occurrences I meet with in my reading, which will serve to fix them upon my mind."

Soon after this, in a similar strain, he wrote to his mother from across the ocean:

"PASSY, September the 27th, 1778. "HONORED MAMMA,-My papa enjoins it upon me to keep a journal, or a diary of the events that happen to me, and of objects that I see, and of characters that I converse with from day to day; and altho' I am convinced of the utility, importance, and necessity of this exercise, yet I have not patience and perseverance enough to do it so constantly as I ought. My papa, who takes a great deal of pains to put me in the right way, has also advised me to keep copies of all my letters, and has given me a convenient blank book for this end; and altho' I shall have the mortification a few years hence to read a great deal of my childish nonsense, yet I shall have the pleasure and advantage of remarking the several steps by which I shall have advanced in taste, judgment, and knowledge. A journal book and a letter book of a lad of eleven years old can not be expected to contain much of science, literature, arts, wisdom, or wit, yet it may serve to perpetuate many observations that I may make, and may hereafter help me to recollect both persons and things that would otherwise escape my memory."

This letter goes on to a very considerable length, and although it has many surperfluous capitals not copied here, it is indeed admirable. The use by a boy of eleven years, of the undignified and childish words, ma, mamma, pa, and papa, in speaking of his parents may be accounted for in several ways. These terms, designed without much foundation and by affectation, to aid young children, may possibly be well enough for them, but as words of endearment they should be for private use. In public display in after life they not only lose their force, but also not unfrequently become a source of ridicule as well as appear unworthy of thoughtful and considerate manly and womanly character. This unseemly feature of these precocious letters may be mitigated by fashion and the fact that

they were then designed for the eyes of the parents only. Words of endearment, whatever they may be, between parents and children are not matters of public suspicion or criticism while they are scrupulously withheld from all ears except those for which they were honestly designed.

Here, at this early period, may be seen the beginning of that practice, on the part of Mr. Adams, of placing on record the events in which he was more or less concerned, and which eventually became a matter of terror to General Jackson and some others. The most voluminous and valuable work of the kind ever left by an American is Mr. Adams's Diary, which has now become a part of the history of the country.

The two. foregoing letters more than portray the character of John Quincy Adams as a boy. All the letters he ever wrote were much like these. In all his after writings he only exhibited a more perfect development of the same traits, a more thorough and accomplished manhood.

As seen in his case, no one can doubt the value and influence of intelligent, refined, and manly associations. He never had any other. Consequently in the following brief letter, upon his first launching out into the world, his father was able to write an unusual postscript:

"UNCLE QUINCY'S,-Half after 11 o'clock, 13 February, 1778. "DEAREST OF FRIENDS,-I had not been twenty minutes in this house, before I had the happiness to see Captain Tucker and a midshipman coming for me. We will soon be on board, and may God prosper our voyage in every stage of it as much as at the beginning, and send to you, my dear children, and all my friends, the choicest blessings!

"So wishes and prays yours, with an ardor that neither absence, nor any other event can abate. JOHN ADAMS.

"P. S.-Johnny sends his duty to his mamma, and his love to his sisters and brothers. He behaves like a man.'

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The next year Mr. Adams again wrote to his wife from France :

"My son has had great opportunities to see this country; but this has unavoidably retarded his education in some other things. He has enjoyed perfect health from first to last, and is respected wherever he goes, for his vigor and vivacity, both of mind and body, for his constant good-humor, and for his rapid progress in French, as well as for his general knowledge, which at his age is uncommon."

All of which was true. If the boy had deserved a different report, it would have been accurately sent to his mother, however reticent his father might have been on the subject to others.

Although John Quincy Adams left home in the spring of 1778 to spend years in Europe in a manner quite novel to an American youth, and was henceforward mainly lost to the direct influences of his mother, his time had been well spent in her society, and neither her precept nor spirit ever left him in the long busy life that followed. This fact it was which caused him to break out in his still eloquent old age:

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"And there my mother with her children lived in unintermitted danger of being consumed with them all in a conflagration kindled by a torch in the same hands which on the 17th of June lighted the fires of Charlestown. I saw with my own eyes those fires, and heard Britannia's thunders in the battle of Bunker's Hill, and witnessed the tears of my mother, and mingled with them my own, at the fall of Warren, a dear friend of my father."

And when his own race was about run, referring to the first and most sacred friend of his life, he said:

"In that same spring and summer of 1775, she taught me to repeat daily, after the Lord's Prayer, before rising from bed, the Ode of Collins :

'How sleep the brave who sink to rest,

By all their country's wishes blest!" "

But Mr. Adams did not acquire his faculty for writing from his father alone. His mother was one of the most sensible letter-writers of her day, and none behind his aristocratic father in her desire to see her son arise to some consideration as a successful and useful man. Nor did she relax her efforts in his behalf when he was under the eye of his father on the other side of the Atlantic, as may be seen in the following letters, as well as others to be found in the second volume of this work ::

"June, 1778.

"MY DEAR SON,-T is almost four months since you left your native land, and embarked upon the mighty waters, in quest of a foreign country. Although I have not particularly written to you since, yet you may be assured you have constantly been upon my heart and mind.

"It is a very difficult task, my dear son, for a tender parent to bring her mind to part with a child of your years going to a distant land; nor could I have acquiesced in such a separation under any other care than that of the most excellent parent and guardian who accompanied you. You have arrived at years capable of improving under the advantages you will be likely to have, if you do but properly attend to them. They are talents put into your hands, of which an account will be required of you hereafter; and, being possessed of one, two, or four, see to it that you double your numbers.

"The most amiable and most useful disposition in a young mind is diffidence of itself; and this should lead you to seek advice and instruction from him who is your natural guardian, and will always counsel and direct you in the best manner, both for your present and future happiness. You are in possession of a naturally good understanding, and of spirits unbroken by

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