I have no time nor accommodation to write of late; besides, I seldom know what to write, and when I do, I don't love to write it. One thing is now becoming more and more certain every day, that is, that our people will and do fight. And although they make a clumsy hand of it, yet they do better and better. I am lodged in the house of General Roberdeau, an Israelite indeed, I believe, who with his sisters and children and servants does everything to make us happy. We are highly favored. No other delegates are so well off. I am as well as usual. Your dream will never come to pass. You never can be coolly received by me while my heart beats and my senses remain. I had no letter from you by the last post. Yours, yours, yours, JOHN ADAMS. 217. JOHN ADAMS. Yorktown, 15 October, 1777. I have not been able of late to keep up my correspondence with you so constantly as my heart inclined me to do. But I hope now to write you oftener; but I don't incline to write very particularly, lest my letters should be intercepted. I am in tolerable health, but oppressed with a load of public cares. I have long foreseen that we should be brought down to a great degree of depression before the people of America would be convinced of their real danger, of the true causes of it, and be stimulated to take the necessary steps for a reformation. Government and law in the States, large taxation, and strict discipline in our armies are the only things wanting as human means. These with the blessing of Heaven will certainly produce glory, triumph, liberty and safety, and peace, and nothing but these will do. I long with the utmost impatience to come home. Don't send a servant for me. The expense is so enormous that I cannot bear the thought of it. I will crawl home upon my little pony, and wait upon myself as well as I can. I think you had better sell my horse. The people are universally calling for fighting and for blood. Washington is getting into the humor of fighting, and Howe begins to dread it. And well he may. Fighting will certainly answer the end, although we may be beaten every time for a great while. We have been heretofore greatly deceived concerning the numbers of militia. But there are numbers enough, if they knew how to fight, which as soon as their Generals will let them, they will learn. 218. ABIGAIL ADAMS. 20 October, 1777. 'T is true, my dearest friend, that I have spent an anxious three weeks, and the sight of a letter from you gave me joy beyond expression. I had sent every post day, and every post was disappointed. I could not learn one word with certainty. Nor can I now determine whether you are eighty-eight miles nearer to me, or farther off than you were before.