“We continued our friendship and confidential intercourse, though professedly in boxes of politics, as opposite as East and West, until the year 1774, when we both attended the Superior Court in Falmouth, Casco-bay, now Portland. I had then been chosen a delegate to Congress. Mr. Sewall invited me to take a walk with him, very early in the morning, on the great hill. In the course of our rambles he very soon begun to remonstrate against my going to Congress. He said ’that Great Britain was determined on her system; her power was irresistible and would certainly be destructive to me, and to all those who should persevere in opposition to her designs.’ I answered, ’that I knew Great Britain was determined on her system, and that very determination, determined me on mine; that he knew I had been constant and uniform in opposition to all her measures; that the die was now cast; I had passed the Rubicon; swim or sink, live or die, survive or perish with my country, was my unalterable determination.’ The conversation was protracted into length, but this was the substance of the whole. It terminated in my saying to him, ’I see we must part, and with a bleeding heart I say, I fear forever; but you may depend upon it, this adieu is the sharpest thorn on which I ever sat my foot.’ I never conversed with him again ’till the year 1788. Mr. Sewall retired in 1775 to England, where he remained and resided in Bristol....

“In 1788, Mr. Sewall came to London to embark for Halifax. I enquired for his lodgings and instantly drove to them, laying aside all etiquette, to make him a visit. I ordered my servant to announce John Adams, was instantly admitted, and both of us forgetting that we had ever been enemies, embraced each other as cordially as ever. I had two hours conversation with him in a most delightful freedom upon a multitude of subjects. He told me he had lived for the sake of his two children; he had spared no pains nor expense in their education, and he was going to Halifax in hope of making some provision for them. They are now two of the most respectable gentlemen in Canada. One of them a Chief Justice; the other an Attorney General. Their father lived but a short time after his return to America; evidently broken down by his anxieties and probably dying of a broken heart. He always lamented the conduct of Great Britain towards America. No man more constantly congratulated me, while we lived together in America, upon any news, true or false, favorable to a repeal of the obnoxious Statutes and a redress of our grievances; but the society in which he lived had convinced him that all resistance was not only useless but ruinous.”

“While I was in London, my quondam friend, Jno. Adams, sent me a complimentary card, and afterwards made me a long friendly visit, as Mrs. Adams soon after did to Mrs. Sewell; and they then earnestly pressed us to take a family-dinner with them; in a way so evidently friendly and hearty, that I was sorry I could not comply; but having resolved to make no Visits nor accept of any Invitations; and having upon this ground previously declined invitations to dine with Sr. Wm. Pepperrell, your friend Mr. Clark, and several other friends, I was obliged, to avoid giving offence, to decline this. When Mr. Adams came in, he took my hand in both his, and with a hearty squeeze, accosted me in these words—how do you do my dear old friend! Our Conversation was just such as might be expected at the Meeting of two old sincere friends after a long separation. Adams has a heart formed for friendship, and susceptible of it’s finest feelings; he is humane, generous and open—warm in his friendly Attachments tho’ perhaps rather implacable to those whom he thinks his enemies—and tho’ during the american Contest, an unbounded Ambition and an enthusiastic Zeal for the imagined, or real, glory and welfare of his Country, (the ofspring perhaps, in part, tho imperceptible to himself, of disappointed Ambition,) may have suspended the operation of those social and friendly principles, which, I am positive, are in him, innate and congenial; yet, sure I am, they could not be eradicated;—they might sleep inactive, like the body in the grave, during the Storm raised by more violent and impetuous passions, in his political career for the Goal to which, Zeal and Ambition, united, kept his Eye immoveably fixed; but a resuscitation must have been the immediate Consequence of the peace; gratify’d in the two darling wishes of his Soul,—the Independence of America acknowledged and established, and he himself placed on the very pinnacle of the temple of Honor!—why, the very Devil himself must have felt loving and good-natured after so compleat a victory—much more a Man in whose heart lay dormant every good and virtuous, social and friendly principle. Nature must, and I have no doubt did break forth and assert her rights—of this I am so well convinced, that, if he could but play backgammon, I declare I would chuse him, in preference to all the Men in the world, for my fidus Achates, in my projected asylum: and I believe he would soon find it the happiest State; for if I am not mistaken, now he has reached the summit of his Ambition, he finds himself quite out of his element; and looks back with regret to those happy days, when in a snug house with a pretty farm about him at Braintree, he sat quiet in the full possession of domestic happiness with an amiable sensible wife and an annual increase of olive plants round his table, for whose present and future support he was, by his own honest Industry, for he was an honest lawyer as ever broke Bread, rapidly making ample provision: he is not qualifyed by nature or education to shine in Courts—his abilities are, undoubtedly, quite equal to the mechanical parts of his business as Ambassador; but this is not enough—he cant dance, drink, game, flatter, promise, dress, swear with the gentlemen, and talk small talk and flirt with the Ladys—in short he has none of the essential Arts or ornaments which constitute a Courtier—there are thousands who with a tenth part of his Understanding, and without a spark of his honesty, would distance him infinitely in any Court in Europe. I will only add that I found many Americans in London whose Sentiments and conduct towards him were by no means so liberal as I could have wish’d.”