1From John Adams to Thomas Brand-Hollis, 9 April 1788 (Adams Papers)
I have, to day, received your kind letter of the 7th and the valuable books that accompanied it. Mariana, Corio, and Ramsay, for which I most heartily thank you. I wish I could write romances. True histories of my wanderings and waitings for ships and winds at Ferrol and Corunna in Spain; at Nantes, Lorient and Brest in France; at Helvoet, the island of Goree, and Over Flackee in Holland; and...
2From John Adams to Thomas Brand-Hollis, 5 April 1788 (Adams Papers)
If ever there was any philosophic solitude, your two friends have found it in this place, where we have been wind bound, a whole week, without a creature to speak to. Our whole business, pleasure and amusement has been reading Necker’s Religious opinions, Hayley’s Old Maids, and Cumberland’s fourth Observer. Our whole stock is now exhausted, and if the ship should not arrive with a fresh...