The first edition of Miss Adams’s View of Religion was published before her sister’s death, and partly transcribed by this sister. The second was begun as soon after this afflicting event took place, as she could collect resolution to engage in it. Those who knew her might indeed wonder that any motive could at any time be powerful enough to induce her to publish a book. Her humility, her diffidence, and her total ignorance of business, seemed to present insurmountable obstacles. It was necessary, however, that she should earn a subsistence in some way. She had tried various methods. Making lace, during the war, had been one of the most lucrative employments. But home-made lace could only be tolerated, when no other could be procured; and as soon as importation become easy, it sunk into total disuse. Spinning, weaving, and braiding straw were by turns tried. But all afforded her only a scanty subsistence. Her eyes were weak, and often so much inflamed that she could not use them. Her general health also was extremely feeble, and her mind depressed by present evil, and harassed by distressing fears for the future. ‘It was desperation, therefore, and not vanity,’ said she, ‘that induced me to publish.’ Her memoirs mention the disappointment she experienced in the profits of her first edition. When about publishing a second, it was necessary to pay a few shillings for the further security of the copy-right; and this sum, though so small, she was obliged to borrow from a friend. On the subject of poverty, she always spoke with great feeling. She had early in life been brought up in indulgence; and poverty had come upon her at an age, when the sensibility of the heart are most alive. There can hardly, indeed, be a suffering more acute to a feeling mind, that has experienced the pleasure of bestowing, than to find its means of benevolence cut off, and all its powers necessarily turned into a weary, wasting struggle for self-preservation. ‘And yet,’ she said, ‘I had then enjoyments, of which the rich have no idea. When I had any work brought in that would enable me to earn a few shillings, by which I might buy paper, or any articles of stationary, I engaged in writing with an interest that beguiled the monotony of my life.’ After the second edition of her book was published, she kept a school for the summer months for successive years; and, though in this employment she experienced the usual difficulties of school-keeping in the country, it was, upon the whole, a source of happiness. As the schools were in the neighboring towns, she resided among the parents of the children by turns; and her intelligent and acute mind often derived amusement, and profit, from these occasional residences. She treasured up many pleasant little anecdotes, that marked the habits and manners of the families in which she then lived, many of which retained much of the primitive simplicity of their forefathers.