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Browsing: Diary of John Adams, Volume 1
{p. 12}
4 Thurdsday.
Docno: DJA01d054
Date: 1756-03-04
A fine morn.
5 Fryday.
Docno: DJA01d055
Date: 1756-03-05
Dined at home, Mr. Barnes dined here, drank Tea, and spent the evening at Coll. Chandlers.1
1. The ambiguous punctuation of the MS has been retained. JA probably intended a full stop after “dined here.”
6 Saturday.
Docno: DJA01d056
Date: 1756-03-06
Rose 1/2 after 4. A clowdy morn. Wrote Bolinbrokes letter on retirement and study.
7 Sunday.
Docno: DJA01d057
Date: 1756-03-07
Heard Mr. Maccarty all day. Spent the Evening and supped at Mr. Greenes, with Thayer. Honesty, Sincerity and openness, I esteem essential marks of a good mind. I am therefore of opinion, that men ought, (after they have examined with unbiassed Judgments, every System of Religion, and chosen one System on their own Authority, for themselves) to avow their Opinions and defend them with boldness.
8 Monday.
Docno: DJA01d058
Date: 1756-03-08
Spent the Evening at Major Chandlers. Fair Weather.
9 Tuesday.
Docno: DJA01d059
Date: 1756-03-09
A charming Day. Spent the evening up Chamber.
10 Wednesday.
Docno: DJA01d060
Date: 1756-03-10
A misty morning. [Sun] brake out about noon. Spent Evening at Gardiners.
11 Thurdsday.
Docno: DJA01d061
Date: 1756-03-11
Dined at the Colonels. Drank Tea at Mr. Paines with a number of Ladies, and spent the Evening at Major Chandlers, with Thayer.
12 Fryday.
Docno: DJA01d062
Date: 1756-03-12
Clowdy. Laid a pair of Gloves with Mrs. Willard that she would not see me chew tobacco this month.1
1. We do not know who won this wager. We do know something about JA’s use of tobacco. In 1805 his friend Dr. Benjamin Waterhouse of the Harvard Medical School published a tract entitled Cautions to Young Persons concerning
{p. 13}
Health in a Public Lecture...; containing the General Doctrine of Chronic Diseases; Shewing the Evil Tendency of the Use of Tobacco upon Young Persons; More Especially the Pernicious Effects of Smoking Cigarrs. The lecture had been delivered to Harvard undergraduates, and in it Waterhouse declared that in his twenty-three years at Harvard he had never observed “so many palid faces, and so many marks of declining health; nor ever knew so many hectical habits and consumptive affections” among the students as now (p. 27). These he attributed in large measure to the increasing use of tobacco. A copy sent by the author to JA evoked several letters of reminiscence, in which among other things JA said he had “learned the Use of [tobacco] upon Ponds of Ice, when Skaiting with Boys at Eight Years of Age,” and though he had given it up at certain periods, including his sojourns abroad, he had, to his regret, been a frequent user of tobacco in one form or another for sixty years (JA to Waterhouse, 19 and 13 Feb. 1805, MHi:Adams-Waterhouse Coll.).
Cite web page as: Founding Families: Digital Editions of the Papers of the Winthrops and the Adamses, ed.C. James Taylor. Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 2007.
http://www.masshist.org/ff/
http://www.masshist.org/ff/