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John Thaxter is JQA's schoolmaster from Massachusetts; he accompanies the Adamses on their second voyage to Europe.
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have but little Sun here in the winter, for on the shortest day of the year it is but five hours and a half above the horizon, and on the longest it is eighteen and a half.

The common people here wear almost universally long beards, that is, the men; and in the summer cloth gowns which come down to their knees, and in the winter sheep skin ones, and most commonly boots. The people of fashion wear cloth clothes winter and summer, but in the winter when they go out, they put on furs, and boots lined with flannel, which they slip off as soon as they go into a house.

I am Sir, your most obedient and most humble Servant.

Adams, John Quincy. Letter to John Thaxter, September 8/19, 1781. Adams Family Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society. Published in Adams Family Correspondence, Volume 4: October 1780 - September 1782 (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1973). Page 214.