Abigail Adams and Her TimesRichards, Laura Elizabeth Howe
History
Abigail Adams and Her Times
Richards, Laura Elizabeth Howe
Adams, Abigail, 1744-1818
"The particulars of our journey I must reserve, to be communicated after
my return. It would take a volume to describe the whole. It has been
upon the whole an agreeable jaunt. We have had opportunities to see the
world and to form acquaintances with the most eminent and famous men in
the several colonies we have passed through. We have been treated with
unbounded civility, complaisance, and respect. We yesterday visited
Nassau Hall College, and were politely treated by the scholars, tutors,
professors, and president, whom we are this day to hear preach. Tomorrow
we reach the theatre of action. God Almighty grant us wisdom and virtue
sufficient for the high trust that is devolved upon us. The spirit of
the people, wherever we have been, seems to be very favorable. They
universally consider our cause as their own, and express the firmest
resolution to abide by the determination of the Congress.
"I am anxious for our perplexed, distressed province; hope they will be
directed into the right path. Let me entreat you, my dear, to make
yourself as easy and quiet as possible. Resignation to the will of
Heaven is our only resource in such dangerous times. Prudence and
caution should be our guides. I have the strongest hopes that we shall
yet see a clearer sky and better times.
"Remember my tender love to little Abby; tell her she must write me a
letter and inclose it in the next you send. I am charmed with your
amusement with our little Johnny. Tell him I am glad to hear he is so
good a boy as to read to his mamma for her entertainment, and to keep
himself out of the company of rude children. Tell him I hope to hear a
good account of his accidence and nomenclature when I return. . . .
"The education of our children is never out of my mind. Train them to
virtue. Habituate them to industry, activity, and spirit. Make them
consider every vice as shameful and unmanly. Fire them with ambition to
be useful. Make them disdain to be destitute of any useful or ornamental
knowledge or accomplishment. Fix their ambition upon great and solid
objects, and their contempt upon little, frivolous, and useless ones. It
is time, my dear, for you to begin to teach them French. Every decency,
grace, and honesty should be inculcated upon them. . . ."
ABIGAIL ADAMS TO JOHN ADAMS.
"I own I feel not a little agitated with the accounts I have this day
received from town; great commotions have arisen in consequence of a
discovery of a traitorous plot of Colonel Brattle's,--his advice to Gage
to break every commissioned officer and to seize the province's and
town's stock of gunpowder. . . .
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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