1John Adams to Benjamin Waterhouse, 8 September 1784 (Adams Papers)
I received your friendly Letter of the 19. June, by my dear M rs Adams, with great Pleasure and Shall ever be obliged to you for a Line when you have Leisure.— I am very glad our University has so able a Professor of Physick, and I doubt not you will soon Silence all Opposition. I should be obliged to you for your two orations. All Paris, and indeed all Europe, is at present amused with a Kind...
2From John Adams to Benjamin Waterhouse, 23 April 1785 (Adams Papers)
This Letter will be delivered you, by your old Acquaintance, John Quincy Adams, whom I beg Leave to recommend to your Attention and favour. He is anxious to Study Sometime, at your University before he begins the Study of the Law which appears at present to be the Profession of his Choice. He must undergo an Examination, in which I Suspect he will not appear exactly what he is. in Truth there...
3From John Adams to Benjamin Waterhouse, 24 February 1791 (Adams Papers)
It was not, till yesterday that I received your kind Letter, with your Discourse on Animation; for both of which obliging favours I pray you to accept of my best Thanks. My incessant Drudgery for three and thirty Years in the dull fields and forests of Law and Politicks, has rendered it impossible for me to Spare much of my time, in disquisitions of natural Knowledge. Whenever any Thing of the...
4From John Adams to Benjamin Waterhouse, 10 September 1800 (Adams Papers)
I have received and will communicate to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, your Prospect of exterminating the Small Pox. I have read this History of the Kine Pox with pleasure. Your Zeal and Industry to give these Experiments fair play in America deserve the thanks of all the Friends of science and Humanity. To disarm the Small Pox of its contagion is an enterprize worthy of a Hercules...
5From John Adams to Benjamin Waterhouse, 13 February 1805 (Adams Papers)
I thank you for your Lecture on Tobacco which I received this morning and have read with much pleasure. Having been a great Offender in the Use of this Weed in some parts of my life, I may not be an unpreju di ced Judge: but I know that may be borne, without any Sensible Inconvenience. I lived many years in France and in England and after my return in America, without any Use of the Pipe or...
6From John Adams to Benjamin Waterhouse, 19 February 1805 (Adams Papers)
When I wrote you a line of Acknowledgment for your Lecture upon Tobacco, I kept no Copy of it, not expecting to ever hear any thing more of it, and I really remember very little that was in it. Tobacco, I have found by a long experience, having learned the use of it upon Ponds of Ice, when Skating with Boys at Eight years of Age, to be a very dangerous Vegetable, extremely apt to Steal upon a...
7From John Adams to Benjamin Waterhouse, 24 July 1805 (Adams Papers)
In the course of your industrious researches, in natural History have you ever given a particular attention to the generation of Shell fish? Will you be so good as to inform me in what Book this subject has been most fully treated? I suspect, but it is only a suspicion, that a great part of them are hatched by the sun, upon the Surface of the ocean; and that the proscess has been carried on,...
8From John Adams to Benjamin Waterhouse, 7 August 1805 (Adams Papers)
From early Youth I have heard it lamented among Men of Letters that We had no neither a natural History of this Country, nor any Person possessed of a Taste for such Inquiries. The Science in general was not So much desired as a particular Examination of the Beasts Birds, Fishes Trees Plants Flowers Fossills &c peculiar to North America. Mr. Hutchinson, at the close of the first volume of his...
9From John Adams to Benjamin Waterhouse, 9 August 1805 (Adams Papers)
I told you before, that I had renounced the Study of Natural Philosophy and Mathematicks for fifty Years. When in 1755 I entered on the Study of the Law, I Saw before me Such a field of natural, civil, and common Law, and in Such a Group of Men as Gridley Pratt Otis, Trowbridge Thatcher, Worthington Hawley And Putnam &c among whom I must Act a part upon the Stage not indeed to make my Way to...
10From John Adams to Benjamin Waterhouse, 11 August 1805 (Adams Papers)
Many thanks for your favour of the 9th: and the copy of your Memorial to the Corporation. I really think you have a right to take for your motto, which of Virgil’s lines you please. I was too hasty in the choice of mine. I have not been a Bee. My object has not been luxurious, like honey, but essentials of life, like Corn. I have had no sting, at least have used none. If I had I might have...