Adams Family Correspondence, volume 3
My spirits are rather low, I do not feel in any great moode for useing my pen, yet I cannot let this opportunity slip without expressing my concern for your Health. The Humour you complain of, is a sad compound I fear, among the ingredients the Salt Rhume is of the most obstinate and inveterate kind as I can assure you by sad experience. I have tried many things with little or no Effect. Where it once takes possession it will not be removed, and in you and me it claims a Hereditary right. But if it continues to harass you, I would advise you to return and go into a Regular course of phthick
You would be surprized I suppose if I should tell you that my Father was inoculated for the small pox and is this day Breaking out; he has it in this Town at Col. Quincys. I believe I mentiond to you in a former Letter that the whole Farms were under Inoculation for the small pox. Mr. Wibird has just recoverd from it.
Would it surprize you still more if I should carry you to a Barn at the Worlds End,1 and shew your Father just Breaking out with the same Disease; yet so it is. I would not write you an account of it till I had been myself to your Fathers and heard from your own Family how he was. He is comfortable and like to do well, your sister
No News yet of the Boston, and tomorrow compleats 4 months since I committed my Happiness to the winds and waves. O when will it again be wafted Back to your Friend
The tip of a peninsula in Hingham Bay.
Amiable tho unjust Portia! doubly unjust!—to yourself, and to me. Must I only write to you in the Language of Gazettes, enumerating, on the Part of Britain, Acts of Deceit, Insolence and Cruelty; or, on the part of America, Instances of Patience under repeated Losses, Fortitude under uncommon Hardships, and Humanity under the grossest Provocations to Revenge? Must I suppress Opinion, Sentiment and just Encomium upon the Gracefullness of a lovely suffering Wife or Mother? It seems I must or be taxed as a Flatterer. Immured for many Months in a Prison, and, upon escape from thence, confined in a narrow Circle, with He-Creatures, drudging, plodding Politicians, for an equally tedious Period of Time, I did not suspect that my Pen could now run in such a Stile of social Intercourse as to provoke a delicate Judge among the Polishers of the Manners of our Race to call me Adulator. After having called you unjust, I will not set so light by my Decission as to venture to make, to you, any Remarks upon the remaining Parts of your Letter now before me,1 whether original or quoted. I will content myself, as I have done for a Month back, with secret Admiration.
Mr. Thaxter sending a Course of printed Papers,2 it becomes unnecessary for me at this Time to try my Hand at paragraph Writing: But I cannot omit to say that I hardly conceive it possible that your Information of the Capture of the Boston can be good, as neither the Fishkill nor Pokipsie Gazettes mention it; and their Publishers are more in the Way than you to know what is the News in the City of New York. I do not mention this to cheat you with false Hope; for, be assured, I think you qualified to hear bad News: And I will prove that this is not Flattery; for I will give you whatever comes to my Knowledge in Regard to my worthy Friend, your dearest, be it good or 44bad. And I will continue to esteem you for many good Qualities, though you make your Slips now and then by calling Names and misconstruing the honest Sentiments of Your sincere humble Servant,
Not found.
“What I mentioned as private in my last is now published in the inclosed paper” (Thaxter to AA, 13 June, Adams Papers). Enclosure is not now with Thaxter's letter, but it must have been a copy of the Pennsylvania Gazette of this date, which contained the recent correspondence and resolutions of Congress relative to the British conciliatory commission; see Thaxter to AA, 10 June, above.