Adams Papers

21st.

21st.

Hazy weather again all the forenoon.

I went and pass’d an hour with my friend White before dinner. Spent the afternoon with Mr. Thaxter at his office. Mr. Dodge was there, a great part of the Time. We conversed upon various subjects. Mr. Thaxter whose feelings are very warm, express’d his sentiments quite openly with respect to a gentleman, whose political conduct has been of late somewhat suspicious. I drank tea at Mr. B. Bartlett’s: Parson Smith with his lady, Captain Willis and his wife were there and Mr. and Mrs. Lee from Cambridge. It was the first time I had ever been in company with Mr. Lee. He has, I am told much more show than solidity. He does good however with his fortune; and this is meritorious, though the motives by which he is actuated, may not be the most noble and generous.1

Return’d home at about 7 o’clock, and received an invitation from Judge Sargeant, which will detain me here one day more.

1Joseph Lee, the Cambridge merchant and investor whose appointment to the Mandamus Council in 1774 and dramatic resignation from that body in the face of a mob marked him as a loyalist in the eyes of many. After the start of the Revolution Lee was dropped as a judge from the Middlesex co. court of common pleas, but his property was not confiscated (Sibley-Shipton, Harvard Graduates description begins John Langdon Sibley and Clifford K. Shipton, Biographical Sketches of Graduates of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Cambridge and Boston, 1873- . description ends , 8:592–598).

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