Diary of John Adams, volume 1
A fine morn.
Dined at home, Mr. Barnes dined here, drank Tea, and spent the evening at Coll. Chandlers.1
The ambiguous punctuation of the MS has been retained. JA probably intended a full stop after “dined here.”
Rose 1/2 after 4. A clowdy morn. Wrote Bolinbrokes letter on retirement and study.
Heard Mr. Maccarty all day. Spent the Evening and supped at Mr. Greenes, with Thayer. Honesty, Sincerity and openness, I esteem essential marks of a good mind. I am therefore of opinion, that men ought, (after they have examined with unbiassed Judgments, every System of Religion, and chosen one System on their own Authority, for themselves) to avow their Opinions and defend them with boldness.
Spent the Evening at Major Chandlers. Fair Weather.
A charming Day. Spent the evening up Chamber.
A misty morning.
Dined at the Colonels. Drank Tea at Mr. Paines with a number of Ladies, and spent the Evening at Major Chandlers, with Thayer.
Clowdy. Laid a pair of Gloves with Mrs. Willard that she would not see me chew tobacco this month.1
We do not know who won this wager. We do know something about JA’s use of tobacco. In 1805 his friend Dr. Benjamin Waterhouse of the Harvard Medical School published a tract entitled Cautions to Young Persons concerning 13Health in a Public Lecture...; containing the General Doctrine of Chronic Diseases; Shewing the Evil Tendency of the Use of Tobacco upon Young Persons; More Especially the Pernicious Effects of Smoking Cigarrs. The lecture had been delivered to Harvard undergraduates, and in it Waterhouse declared that in his twenty-three years at Harvard he had never observed “so many palid faces, and so many marks of declining health; nor ever knew so many hectical habits and consumptive affections” among the students as now (p. 27). These he attributed in large measure to the increasing use of tobacco. A copy sent by the author to JA evoked several letters of reminiscence, in which among other things JA said he had “learned the Use of