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Browsing: Diary of John Quincy Adams, Volume 2
{p. 58}
29th.
Docno: DQA02d107
Date: 1786-06-29
Went to Boston, and attended my aunt Smith's funeral. Sat about an hour with my old Companion Johonnot who shew me some more of his Poetry. We returned to Cambridge, in the midst of the Rain in the Evening.
30th.
Docno: DQA02d108
Date: 1786-06-30
Mr. and Mrs. Cranch, Mr. W Smith, and Miss Betsey, came up here this afternoon and drank tea.
Fine Weather.
Finis.
Docno: DQA02d109
Date: 1786-06-30
Nil tam difficile, quod non Solertia vincat.1
1. This Latin proverb originally appeared at the beginning of JQA's first discourse before the A.B. Club (entry for 12 June, above).
[Titlepage]
Docno: DQA02d110
Date: 1786-07-01 - 1787-10-31
[dateline] Paris. J. Q. Adams. Aug: 20th 1783.
Ephemeris.
Vol II.1
From July 1st. 1786 to October 31st. 1787.
Tempora labuntur, tacitisque senescimus annis,
Et fugiunt, fraeno non remorante dies.
[signed] Ovid.2
1786
1. Titlepage for D/JQA/11, covering the inclusive dates inscribed. The top line on this page is written in an earlier hand, presumably the date on which he purchased the blank Diary book. This same inscription appears on the top of titlepages of D/JQA/10 and 12, which are identical 380-page leather-bound books, all measuring 4¼″ × 6¾″.
2. “Time slips away, and we grow old with silent lapse of years; there is no bridle that can curb the flying days,” Fasti, Bk. VI, lines 771–772 (Opera, 5 vols., London, 1745, 1:[134], at MQA; Publii Ovidii Nasonis Fastorum Libri Sex, transl. Sir James George Frazer, 5 vols., London, 1929, 1:352–353). JQA purchased his own edition of Ovid, cited above, on 15 March 1785.
Saturday July 1st. 1786.
Docno: DQA02d111
Date: 1786-07-01
1. This was the college military company, founded in 1770, and named the Marti-Mercurian Band because of its motto, “tam marti quam mercurio.” It was an association for exercise and recreation which marched and maneuvered with fife and drum, though it did not see service in the Revolution. The company was reformed in 1786, procured arms on loan from Gov. Bowdoin, and flourished for a year before it died away again. It was not reestablished thereafter until 1811. During the Shays' uprising the arms loaned to the band were returned and used by a regular infantry company against the insurgents (Columbian Centinel, 2 April 1828; Morison, Three Centuries of Harvard, p. 141).
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/