31From John Adams to Benjamin Waterhouse, 8 May 1821 (Adams Papers)
You must have much pleasure in watching the Opining mind of your Grandchild; for, being half Waterhouse and half Ware it must be a choice Spirit. But how Smal is your felicity in comparison with mine, who have Seven Grand Children, Scattered over the World, and Seven more under my own roof, and eight or ten great grandchildren, one of whom is here with her Mother. A great grand daughter, and a...
32From John Adams to Benjamin Waterhouse, 18 May 1821 (Adams Papers)
I have made my Cantabridgians read your Letter to all my family at Breakfast. We all recognized the concordance between the Oration upon Industry and Doctor Barrows Sermons which I have caused to be read in my family over and over. Indeed I do not believe it possible for human Ingenuity to write any Thing upon Industry which may not be found Substantially in his five Sermons in favour of that...
33From John Adams to Benjamin Waterhouse, 21 May 1821 (Adams Papers)
I am glad I forgot to return your Son’s beautiful morsel on Industry with my last Letter; because it furnishes an Apology for writing another. In answering a letter I commonly forget to notice two thirds of it, till my Answer is Sent away. Helvetius and Rousseau preached to the French Nation Liberty , till they made them the most mechanical Slaves; equality till they destroyed all Equity;...
34From John Adams to Benjamin Waterhouse, 25 May 1821 (Adams Papers)
I received yesterday your favour of the 22nd and will begin at the end of it you must not utter a word or insinuate a hint against the character of Junius Brutus He had eyes as piercing as lightning, views as vast as the globe and benevolence as expansive as the human race. He had an exalted soul and a heart of celestial fire. He was as ready to sacrifice his own life as that of his sons And...
35From John Adams to Benjamin Waterhouse, 21 October 1821 (Adams Papers)
The ha rare happiness we have injoyed in the society of J Q A and his family, the consiquent occupations amusements & intercourse of visits and social festivities as well as grave lectures & solemn disquisitions, have prevented my acknowledgement of yours of the 18th. of September.—I must add to all this something of an opposite character eyes distempered almost to blindness, knees & hands...
36From John Adams to Benjamin Waterhouse, 25 November 1821 (Adams Papers)
I sympathise with Alexipharmacus in his resentment of the indignities offered to Richardson, Lock, Barrow &ca: yet I cannot approve of the principle of Clarissa Harlow’s history, because such virtue ought never to be rendered so unfortunate; for I believe it never is, even in this world; nor was ever so infernal a villain as Love-lace ever able to maintain, for so long a time, the esteem and...
37From John Adams to Benjamin Waterhouse, 10 June 1822 (Adams Papers)
Thanks for your letter of 5th. June and smoaking lecture but as I have not read the lecture I shall confine myself in this, the smoaking Theology. I believe you have heard of the Park Street prayers for the conversion of Boston and Cambridge, in which as far as they are good, sincere, honest pure and benevolent, I heartily join them; but which as far as they are hypocritical bigoted and...
38From James Madison to Benjamin Waterhouse, 22 June 1822 (Madison Papers)
I have recd. your favor of the 9th. with a copy of your Lecture on Tobacco & ardent spirits. It is a powerful dissuasion from the pernicious use of such stimulants. I had read, formerly, the first Edition of the Lecture; but have read this last also, for the sake of the additions and Notes. Its foreign translations and its reaching a fifth Edition are encouraging evidences of its usefulness;...
39Thomas Jefferson to Benjamin Waterhouse, 26 June 1822 (Jefferson Papers)
I have recieved and read with thankfulness & pleasure your denunciation of the abuses of tobacco & wine. yet however sound in it’s principles, I expect it will be but a sermon to the wind. you will find it as difficult to inculcate these sanative precepts on the sensualists of the present day, as to convince an Athanasian that there is but one God. I wish success to both attempts, and am happy...
40Thomas Jefferson to Benjamin Waterhouse, 19 July 1822 (Jefferson Papers)
An antiently dislocated, and now stiffening wrist makes writing an operation so slow and painful to me that I should not so soon have troubled you with an acknolegement of your favor of the 8 th but for the request it contained of my consent to the publication of my letter of June 26 . No, my dear Sir, not for the world. into what a nest of hornets would it thrust my head! the genus irritabile...