I recd. to day your favour of March 29th. I write you every Post day and send my Letter to the office. If they do not come regularly to you it must be owing to the office.

It would hurt me to refuse the request of my Nephew Elisha Adams: but you gave him and his Mother all the Answer in your Power. If Dr Tufts has any Money of mine in his hands, I should be glad if he would Supply my Nephew and take his Security. I never was in greater Straits for money in my Life, than at this time. I know not how to get along and expect to be obliged to borrow at the bank. But it is in vain to talk to the People about these Things

I want Physick and I want Exercise: but I want your assistance more than either. You must come and leave the Place to the mercy of Winds.

I will let them, the Places all out next Year for what they will fetch in money. reserving the house and Garden.

You must come here and see, before you will have an Idea of the, continual Application to Business, to which I am called. I should not have believed it possible for my Eyes to have read the Papers which are brought me every day and every hour of the day. I wonder not that my Predecessor was weary.

Adets Visit was not in a public Capacity. He solicited a private Interview and I consented. The Purport was to clear up his Character. But it was of no Consequence.— I shall not write about it. He is now soliciting Permission to call on me to take Leave before his Departure. It is hardly consistent to grant it— But I wont make difficulties & give them handles about such Trifles—dont mention this.1

You must come, at all Events and leave the Place as you can—nay if you leave it common and bring Mrs Brisler & her Children. You must hire Horses as I wrote you. tell Louisa We shall have a pretty Chamber for her. she will have the honour of sleeping & dressing and reading & writing in no less an Apartment than that in which the celebrated Washington transacted all the Business of the Govt. But this must not be whispered. it will be tho’t too irreverent.

On the 4th. I inclosed a Post note for 600— make the best bargain you can for Horses.— You must go for the Hot months to East Chester, and keep your Horses at the Tavern & pay for your board—and I must go to the Feoderal City2—that must be my farm in future: and I shall have as much more plague as less Pleasure, in it, than I had in the Quincy farm. You must get my Brother to board Billlngs— But I believe you must get Mears at least for this summer. I am determined not to be perplexed with Farms. Dr Tufts may Let all but the House for a Rent or upon shares or any Way.

Come away and leave it to Chance. My Duty to my Mother & love to my Brother and Neighbours and friends. it would give me 64 great Pleasure to see them— But I fear it will not be possible this Year.

Cousin Boylston was in the right.— My farm would give me more Pleasure in a Week than my office in four Years— Except that all the Pleasure of Life that is solid consists in doing ones duty. You invite me to write and you must take such Trash and I can write without thinking.

Yet I think a great deal about you— I wish I could come to escort you but that is impossible.

affectionately

Just after writing my last Letter I received your kind one of March 20; by which I find your departure is postponed until July. As it continues to us the opportunity of hearing frequently and regularly from each other it is an agreeable circumstance; it would be still more so, if it could secure to us the means of meeting again in Europe, which will however I apprehend be impossible.

You mention having lately read Lord Chesterfield’s Letters, and desire my opinion of them.— I have never read them all— It was a book which my early instructors never thought proper to put into my hands.— They did not judge it the best course of education; and since I have been of age to choose books for my own perusal, I have had too much contempt for the general Principles of those Letters, to scrutinize with much attention the details.

Chesterfield was a Courtier, and a nobleman; and all his views of life, his course of observations, and his maxims of conduct founded 65 on them, are confined to the very narrow circle of which such a situation is the centre.— Hence the stain of depravity which pervades all his ideas of morality— Hence the ridiculous importance which he would give to grace, elegance and propriety of manners in Society.— His theory is calculated only to produce an accomplished knave, and accordingly, I understand, that almost all the cheats, swindlers, and thieves who abound so much in the City of London, are the highest adepts in the practice of his instructions. The very foundation of his system, the reason for which he teaches the sacrifice of every virtue to the art of captivating favour is false.— To please, says he, is the way to rise in the world. I do not believe this to be true, even in England.— I am sure it is not true, any where within my experience and observation. If by rising in the world, he meant the acquisition of Wealth, or honour, or fame, or power; I can name an hundred examples of men who have thus risen, from other qualities. I know not one instance where it has been owing to this art of pleasing.— The fact may perhaps be directly the contrary. At least I know instances of persons who suffer, in the opinion of the world, by their great accomplishment in this art, and Lord Chesterfield himself, if he had possessed nothing but his graces, would most certainly never have risen higher in the world than to the rank of an approved dancing master. Indeed had he been born in any of the lower ranks of life it is not improbable that his vicious morality combined with his system of courtesy, would have turned him off at last, in the same manner as many of his thieving disciples, still meet their end.

The object of all reading should be amusement or instruction, and the last is by far the most valuable of the two motives. It should not be forgotten even when the other is principally sought. Instead of Lord Chesterfields lessons of elegance, treachery, and infidelity, I would recommend not merely to your perusal, but to your attentive meditation and reflection the severe virtues of a Man, the very contrast of Chesterfield, both as to principles and manners: your own namesake Dr: Johnson.— You will read with pleasure, all his works, and I think it impossible to read them without great improvement. His maxims of life, are those of honour and honesty; Chesterfield’s are those of fraud and baseness. The Rambler especially and the Lives of the Poets contain a fund of moral principles and of literary taste, which cannot be too much studied.— His Letters are excellent both in style and sentiment.— One of them, written to Lord 66 Chesterfield must I think have disconcerted the nobleman’s Graces, and ruffled altogether his good breeding.1

I remain with the steadiest affection, your friend