"If women," says the writer, "are to be esteemed our enemies, methinks it is an ignoble cowardice, thus to disarm them, and not allow them the same weapons we use ourselves; but if they deserve the title of our friends, 't is an inhuman tyranny to debar them of the privileges of ingenuous education, which would also render their friendship so much the more delightful to themselves and us. Nature is seldom observed to be niggardly of her choicest gifts to the sex. Their senses are generally as quick as ours, their reason as nervous, their judgment as mature and solid. To these natural perfections add but the advantages of acquired learning, what polite and charming creatures would they prove; whilst their external beauty does the office of a crystal to the lamp, not shrouding, but disclosing, their brighter intellects. Nor need we fear to lose our empire over them by thus improving their native abilities; since, where there is most learning, sense, and knowledge, there is always observed to be the most modesty and rectitude of manners."[191]
FOOTNOTES:
[191] This letter did not reach its destination. The rough copy remaining terminates with this quotation.
235. Abigail Adams.
23 August, 1778.
I could not omit so favorable an opportunity as the present of writing you a line by Mr. Warren, who is upon his travel and probably may take France in his way. The welfare of your family is so essential to your happiness that I would improve every means of assuring you of it and of communicating to you the pleasure I have had in receiving every letter you have written since you first left the harbor of Boston. Mine to you have not been equally successful. Several packets have been sent to Neptune, though improperly directed, and I query whether, having found his mistake, he has had complaisance enough to forward them. So that you must not charge to me any failure, in point of punctuality or attention, but to the avidity of the watery god who I really believe has destroyed them. But enough of romance.
You see me in good spirits. I can tell you the cause. The Alliance arrived last week and brought me the feast of reason and the flow of soul; assurances too of the health of my dear absent friends. Those only who know what a separation is of the tenderest connections can form adequate ideas of the happiness which even a literary communication affords.
I have written to you and my dear son by Captain Sampson. If Mr. Warren should be bearer of this to you, I need not ask you to love him. His merit will insure him that, and every attention he may stand in need of, from one who never suffers the promising youth to pass unnoticed by. He has a double claim to your friendship, not only on account of his own worth but the long and intimate friendship which has ever subsisted between his worthy parents and the friend I address, who will accept of the tenderest sentiments for his health and happiness from his ever affectionate
A. Adams.