Diary of Charles Francis Adams, volume 2
1828-07-25
The weather being warm and my horse not having had a day’s rest for some time, I concluded upon remaining at Quincy the whole day. My time was mostly occupied in study. I read a large part of Cicero’s Oration for Roscius over and then took a bath at the wharf. Passed the remainder of the morning in reading some lives in the Biographia Brittanica.1 Mrs. Foster, sister of Mrs. T. B. Adams, and some of her children dined and passed the afternoon here. My College Classmate, Charles, was of the number.2 In the afternoon I read part of Voltaire’s Peter the First and passed a short time in the Nursery. The Chesnuts are at last forthcoming. Captains Morris and Patterson3 of the Navy called here in the evening. The moon was bright after the thunder shower which occurred in the afternoon, and made the piazza delightful.
In the Stone Library there is a set of Biographia Britannica: or, the Lives of the Most Eminent Persons Who Have Flourished in Great Britain and Ireland, from the Earliest Ages, 6 vols., London, 1747–1763. Another set owned by JA is among his books in the Boston Public Library (
Catalogue of JA’s Library
, p. 28).
Phineas Foster, a Boston merchant, and Frances (Harrod) Foster were the parents of Charles Phineas Foster, Harvard 1825.
Capt. Daniel T. Patterson (
Mass. Register, 1828, p. 209).