"I have taken a very great fondness for reading Rollin's Ancient History since you left me. I am determined to go through with it, if possible, in these my days of solitude. I find great pleasure and entertainment from it, and I have persuaded Johnny to read me a page or two every day, and hope he will, from a desire to oblige me, entertain a fondness for it." In the same year the first mention is made of his regular attendance upon a teacher. The person selected in that capacity was a young man named Thaxter, a student at law, transferred from the office in Boston, to the family in Quincy. The boy seems to have been very much attached to him. Mrs. Adams assigned the following reasons for preferring this arrangement to the public town school. "I am certain that if he does not get so much good, he gets less harm; and I have always thought it of very great importance that children should be unaccustomed to such examples as would tend to corrupt the purity of their words and actions, that they may chill with horror at the sound of an oath, and blush with indignation at an obscene expression." This furnishes a pleasing coincidence with a precept of ancient prudence:-- Let nothing foul in speech or act intrude, Where reverend childhood is. There is no disapprobation of public schools to be inferred from this. These are indispensable for the general good; but if from this narrative a hint should be taken for making them more and more pure, and worthy of their saving mission, such an incident will be welcome. Of the next memorable year we have a reminiscence from himself. It was related in a speech at Pittsfield, Massachusetts, in 1843. "In 1775 the minute men, from a hundred towns in the Provinces, were marching to the scenes of the opening war. Many of them called at our house, and received the hospitality of John Adams. All were lodged in the house whom the house would contain, others in the barns, and wherever they could find a place. There were then in my father's house some dozen or two of pewter spoons; and I well recollect seeing some of the men engaged in running those spoons into bullets. Do you wonder that a boy of seven years of age, who witnessed these scenes, should be a patriot?" He saw from Penn's Hill the flames of Charlestown, and heard the guns of Bunker Hill and Dorchester Heights.