Adams Family Correspondence, volume 14
r.12. 1799
We arrived on the 10th.
1 I, much oppressed by one of
my great Colds, which is now going Off.— I could obtain only one little Room
and one little bedroom. but We can make a shift. I came here more loaded
with Sorrow than with Rheum.— Sally opened her Mind to me for the first
time. I pitied her, I grieved, I mourned but could do no more. a Madman
possessed of the Devil can alone express or represent.— I renounce him.— K.
Davids Absalom had some Ambition and some Enterprize.2 Mine is a mere Rake, Buck, Blood
& Beast.
To go from a private Calamity to a public the Fever in
Phyladelphia is still bad, from ten to fourteen in a day. The great black
frosts which come before the Middle of Novr.
If the Weather has been as wett in New England as here, you will have a damp Journey and not pleasant Roads.
I must be seperated from you a whole month, which will appear to me long enough.
RC (Adams Papers); endorsed: “J A
Octbr 12th / 1799.”
On the evening of 11 Oct. “a handsome display of fire
works in honor of the President’s arrival” was presented to a large
crowd in Trenton, N.J., with “the initials (J. A. and G. W.) … displayed
in colored fires, and received with shouts of applause” (Massachusetts Spy, 23 Oct.).
JA in his discussion of CA was evoking 2 Samuel, 18, in which David mourned the death of his son Absalom, who had rebelled against him.