I am so concerned at the style of your last Letter I hasten to answer it immediately although I have not had it more than an hour. Your health which is so precious to both your father and myself is our first care the state of your mind the next—If the first I charge you to take great care. You know the remedies I always apply for a cough as unfortunately you have had too much experience of...
In yours of the 4th & 7th you tell me that you had taken a fresh cold but that it was nearly well—I am very happy to hear it and will only caution you against any imprudence during the coming season which though it betokens the approach of Summer is infinitely more injurious than actual cold weather; be careful to make no change in your cold clothing until I write you and do not hastily throw...
You seem by the facetious tone of your Letters when you honour me with any to imagine that I have a very high opinion of your conduct and the steadiness of your character and take wonderful pains to assure me that you are not exempt from human frailty—do not be uneasy on this score! In the first place you are my Son and have a little of the Mother in you. In the second your very demure people...
I am very much pained by your account of your health and hope sincerely that you have made a short visit to Quincy where such remedies have been applied as have restored you entirely— It gives me great pleasure to learn that you are growing popular in your Class and I grieve that you must lose your room because I know what delight you took in it, and that you spent a good deal of money on it—...
95From John Adams to Charles Francis Adams, 19 December 1825 (Adams Papers)
Knowing as I do the whirlwind of business, ceremony, Levee’s Drawing rooms Dinners, Parties, with which you are hurried away, I acknowledge it a great favour for you to write a letter to me—and when I receive one, it is so much the more pleasure— As to the Message a Father says, that a more meritorious state paper has never appeared on the American Annals; And I think it gives as universal...
I am sorry to say that your last Letter was so badly written that I could scarcely read it and I again implore you to write a larger hand and you will soon get rid of the cramped style which you have acquired I suppose you have been passing an agreeable Vacation at Quincy and found your Grandfather quite well—and as usual occupied in all perusing all the new publications—Your father has...
I have been so unwell it has not been in my power to answer your last Letter—Poor John—Has the belle passion again seized his imagination it is not yet time for it to occupy his heart —Is this the cause of his poetic ardour and his fits of absence—Tell him I shall be much hurt if he does not write me soon for though I will make all possible allowance for love I must not be forgotten— Your...
I will begin my letter, by offerering the joint congratulations of your father and myself, to you and your brothers, and all our mutual friends, on the anniversary of the new year, which we passed with more than usual pleasure, in consequence of the very flattering accounts which we have received in a variety of forms from Boston, of the good conduct and improvement of yourself and your...
Having just dismissed my visitors Mr. Jackson and Mr McTavish I hasten to write you in answer to your long expected and long wished Letter which reached me yesterday— Your encreasing popularity is a thing as you observe calculated to excite vanity you must therefore be on your guard against the encroachment of so ignoble a passion for even men of superior understandings suffer it sometimes to...
100From Louisa Catherine Johnson Adams to Charles Francis Adams, 4 May 1821 (Adams Papers)
You reproach me without a cause and I dare say you got your Letter the very day after you wrote—My time has however been very much occupied in sitting for a picture which is not a quarter finished and which it is probable will employ me the whole summer— You complain without reason of your Letter to me which was by no means bad tho’ it was odd but I do not know what you mean by saying you were...
101From John Quincy Adams to Charles Francis Adams, 10 November 1822 (Adams Papers)
I have received your Letter of the 2d. instt and trusting entirely to the faithfulness of the account which you give in it, of your own conduct, am prepared as I have before promised you to make every allowance for the interruption of your studies occasioned by your infirm state of health—Hoping that it is now permanently recovered, I flatter myself you will make henceforth the proper use of...
I received yesterday my dear Charles your Letter of the 4th. and hasten to answer it as I really feel anxious lest the heated atmosphere in which you appear to have lived for the last week or two should produce have a bad effect and produce the fever which is so common at Cambridge towards the end of a term and generally so frightfully infectious— We are much obliged to you for the information...
103From John Quincy Adams to Charles Francis Adams, 18 May 1822 (Adams Papers)
I have learnt from some of the Letters which you have lately written to your Mother and your Brother, that you express yourself dissatisfied with your situation at the University, and that you have repeatedly intimated the desire of leaving it— My motive in placing you there, was to furnish you with the means of passing through life in the exercise of a liberal profession—By debarring yourself...
I wrote you a very few lines yesterday my dear Charles, with a promise to write to you again immediately and more fully, but I fear that it will not be in my power to say all I wish to say, and for that you will thank your stars—In the first place let me beg you will not suffer Johnson to leave the house to sleep in his barn ; for the consequences might prove fatal to him—In the next let me...
105From John Quincy Adams to Charles Francis Adams, 15 September 1826 (Adams Papers)
I have received your Letter of the 9th. instt. and now enclose a Check on the Branch Bank for 500 dollars payable to your order—With this you will repay the Coachman, his advances; repay to Mary Hellen the 50 dollars borrowed of her, and give the remainder to Antoine, for the purchase of winter fuel and other necessary payments. You and I will settle accounts when I return to Washington, which...
106From John Quincy Adams to Charles Francis Adams, 30 January 1822 (Adams Papers)
You are well aware, because you have mentioned it in more than one of your letters to this place, with how much sorrow I have learnt that at the close of the first term of your studies at the University you were found upon the scale of scholarship among the very lowest in your Class. At the same time it is said that nothing exceptionable has been observed in your personal deportment. That you...
107From John Quincy Adams to Charles Francis Adams, 18 February 1822 (Adams Papers)
I have received, and duly reflected upon your Letter of the 10th instt. and approve very cordially of the determination you have taken, of exerting yourself by diligence to acquire a respectable standing in your Class—From this day your term begins, and if you carry your Resolution into effect I shall not only never have any inducement to repeat the proposal which I made you in my last Letter;...