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Note on the text:

Miss in Her Teens was a popular British comedy, and spectacles are Parisian comedies that JQA hoped to attend more frequently.
Like his peers, JQA kept letterbooks, volumes into which he (or a secretary) copied all of his correspondence. Since in this case the letter he sent is not available, the document imaged below is from his letterbook.
Those selections students are instructed to read appear below in color.
For instructions on how to read the transcriptions, click here.
 

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impracticable to give you a List of them. there is however but one sort of them that I care for and that is calld by the general name of Spectacles. these I like very well but Pappa wont let me go to them so often as I wish. he lets me go now and then especially if there happens to be a tragedy of Corneille Racine or Voltaire. I have been twice to the opera & several times to the Italien Comedy but I have been oftenest to the French Comedy. the others have a great deal of musick and dancing which are sprightly and agreable enough but the language the wit the passions the sentiments the oratory the poetry the manners and morals are at the French Comedy.

If you will promiss to learn French I will in some future letters give you an account of <one> some of them but Remember it is upon Condition that you will learn french

I am &c.

Adams, John Quincy. Letter to Abigail Adams 2d, 27 September 1778. Adams Family Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society. Published in Adams Family Correspondence, Volume 3: April 1778 - September 1780 (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1973). Pages 93-94.