41From 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...
Your Letter full of complaints my dear Charles reached me yesterday and I am sorry to see you indulge still in a querrulous disposition but a little intercourse with young men I still flatter myself will cure you therefore I shall say nothing farther on the subject— Your Trunk I sent on about ten days since and hope as it was addressed to the care of Mr Cruft you have received it safe with the...
Your Shandean Letter is received with all its apologies and few amendments I will only say that you must remember excuses are inadmissible unless they are precursers of improvement— I shall wait your dissertation with impatience from the specimen already sent it will call for some exertion to understand it. You have siezed with considerable humour the broken method of Stern and I give you...
44From John Quincy Adams to Charles Francis Adams, 28 October 1822 (Adams Papers)
In replying to your Letter of the 12th. instt. I might begin, by asking an explanation if its first paragraph—You say that you was taught to think when you came back from Europe, that your Letters were only an incumbrance—It has always given me pleasure to receive Letters from you, and I cannot imagine to what you refer in your supposition to the contrary—If the assurance is necessary from me...
Eh b’en Mon petit Caporal honours seem to thicken so fast on Adams race we can scarce find time to greet or congratulate ere a new event occurs to call forth our gratitude. Well chaqu’un a son tour. And now it is my turn to be brought before the publick by the classic pen of Mr. Colvin or some of his Satellites with the kind intention of blackening the reputation of your father!!! and what is...
Is it because I have not answered your last Letter my dear Charles that you have not written to me? or is it because you are not so attentive as you used to be and devote too much time to novel reading? I hope not the latter as I am inclined to think that much of this sort of reading has a tendency to weaken the judgement, and to create an artificial taste, and what is worse an artificial and...
47From John Adams to Charles Francis Adams, 3 December 1825 (Adams Papers)
I thank you for your two letters—and I wish you would continue to write to me twice a week—my dear Charles Mathematicks and Law are the two rocks on which a Man of business may surely found his reputation, as well as his capacity for doing good, to himself, his friends, his country, as well as to mankind. Study my dear Charles makes the man. It is not novels or Poetry It is neither Scott or...
48From John Quincy Adams to Charles Francis Adams, 12 June 1824 (Adams Papers)
Your Letters of 21. February and 6. April, have remained long unanswered—They are both upon Subjects important to your feelings and prospects, and therefore highly important to me—But independent of the occupations which press so heavily upon my time, the tenour of the first of them, written so soon after you had left us, required some deliberation from me to answer it in the Spirit of the...
Your papa was much pleased with your Letter as it was very prettily written and the style was tolerably good with a little attention you will very soon write a good and handsome hand and I hope that you will equally improve in all the other branches of education concerning which both your father and myself are so anxious— I am very sorry to learn from a Letter from your grandmama that your...
Your brother my Dear Charles is much better and his arm doing well though it will probably be a long time before it will be of any use to him. He is entirely without fever and his health in consequence of leaving off tobacco in all its forms is better than it has been a long time. Both his Surgeons have agreed that he is undermining and destroying his Constition which cannot support any...