JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
P.S. Sir, if you will be so good as to favor me with a blank-book, I will transcribe the most remarkable passages I meet with in my reading, which will serve to fix them on my mind.
Soon after the evacuation of Boston by Lord Howe, Mrs. Adams announces that "Johnny has become post-rider from Boston to Braintree." The distance was nine miles, and he was nine years old. In this hardy enterprise, and in the foregoing letter, we may mark the strong hold which the favourite maxims of the parents had taken of their child's mind. Among those maxims were these:
To begin composition very early by writing descriptions of natural objects, as a storm, a country residence; or narrative of events, as a walk, ride, or the transactions of a day.
To transcribe the best passages from the best writers in the course of reading, as a means of forming the style as well as storing the memory.
To cultivate spirit and hardihood, activity and power of endurance.
Soon after this, the lad ceased to have a home except in the bosom of affection, and that was a divided one. On the 13th of February, 1778, he embarked for France with his father, who had been appointed a commissioner, jointly with Dr. Franklin and Arthur Lee, to negotiate treaties of alliance and commerce with that country. From the place of embarcation his father wrote: "Johnny sends his duty to his mamma, and love to his sister and brothers. He behaves like a man."
When they arrived in France, after escaping extraordinary perils at sea, they found the treaty of alliance already concluded. The son was put to school in Paris, and gave his father "great satisfaction, both by his assiduity to his books and his discreet behavior," all which the father lovingly attributes to the lessons of the mother. He calls the boy "the joy of his heart."
He was permitted to tarry but three months, when he was commissioned to negotiate treaties of independence, peace, and commerce with Great Britain. He embarked for France in the month of November, accompanied by Francis Dana as secretary of legation, and by his two oldest sons, John and Charles.[18] The vessel sprung a leak and was compelled to put into the nearest port, which proved to be Ferrol, where they landed safe December seventh. One of the first things was to buy a,dictionary and grammar for the boys, who "went to learning Spanish as fast as possible." Over high mountains, by rough and miry roads, a-muleback, and in the depth of winter, they wound their toilsome way, much of the time on foot, from Ferrol to Paris, a journey of a thousand miles, arriving about the middle of February, 1780. On this occasion, it is to be presumed, Master Johnny must have derived no small benefit from the service he had seen as "post-rider."
At Paris he immediately entered an academy, but in the autumn accompanied his father to Holland, who had received superadded commissions to negotiate private loans, and public treaties there. For a few months the son was sent to a common school in Amsterdam, but in December he was removed to Leyden, to learn Latin and Greek under the distinguished teachers there, and to attend the lectures of celebrated professors in the University. The reasons of this transfer are worth repeating, as they mark the strong and habitual aversion which John Adams felt and inculcated, to every species of littleness and meanness.