1To John Jay from Richard Peters, 12 December 1818 (Jay Papers)
Although our correspondence is rare, my most sincere regards for you are uninterrupted. I have outlived, & so have you, so many old friends & contemporaries, that the very few left me are the more valuable for their scarcity. New acquaintances I make the most of; but old & valued friends delight me with solid enjoyments, more easily felt than described. And yet, in what is called society, a...
2To John Jay from Richard Peters, 20 March 1821 (Jay Papers)
It is always to me a most gratifying cordial, & delightful antidote to the “ills that flesh is heir to” when I receive an affectionate remembrance from an old & highly valued friend. There are so few left of those we loved in “olden times”, that it seems as if, like other precious commodities, they become the more estimable, in proportion to their scarcity. When I wrote to you on the subject...
3To John Jay from Richard Peters, 25 November 1820 (Jay Papers)
Every occurrence in which you have shared, or originated, seems by some strange perversion to be misunderstood, or misstated, by the present generation, when some favorite individual, or topic, induces the obliquity. Although I give M r Adams his full share of merit in the affair of the Compte de Vergenne’s maneuvring with the british administration on the subject of our treaty of 1783; yet I...
4To John Jay from Richard Peters, 21 February 1826 (Jay Papers)
I am recovering from a long spell of our fashionable Influenza which is leaving me debilitated; but not materially injured. Generally, thro’ a long pilgrimage, I have had no ^durable^ ill health or disease, chronic or temporary. So that it would be ingratitude to a kind providence, in me to complain. I often think of the few old friends left behind the multitudes who are gone to that...