In the warm seasons he relished long walks and time alone on horseback. His oft-stated pleasures were his family, his farm, his books and writing table, a convivial pipe and cup of coffee (now that tea was no longer acceptable), or In his life, he would describe himself as looking rather like a short, thick Archbishop of Canterbury.Īs befitting a studious lawyer from Braintree, Adams was a "plain dressing" man. But it was the dark, perfectly arched brows and keen blue eyes that gave the face its vitality. The chin was firm, the nose sharp, almost birdlike. In such bitter cold of winter, the pink of his round, clean-shaven, very English face would all but glow, and if he were hatless or without a wig, his high forehead and thinning hairline made the whole of the face look rounder still. Were the hands of a man accustomed to pruning his own trees, cutting his own hay, and splitting his own firewood. He was forty years old and he was a revolutionary.ĭismounted, he stood five feet seven or eight inches tall - about "middle size" in that day - and though verging on portly, he had a straight-up, square-shouldered stance and was, in fact, surprisingly fit and solid. John Adams was a lawyer and a farmer, a graduate of Harvard College, the husband of Abigail Smith Adams, the father of four children. Managed great reserve under almost any circumstance.
He himself wished he talked less, and he had particular regard for those, like General Washington, who somehow There were some, even among his admirers, who wished he talked less. He was John Adams of Braintree and he loved to talk. Dressed as they were in heavy cloaks, their hats pulled low against the wind, they were barely distinguishable even from each other, except that the older, stouter of the two did most It might have been any year and they could have been anybody braving Nor was there anything to distinguish the two riders, no signs of rank or title, no liveried retinue bringing up the rear. Nothing about the harsh landscape differed from other winters. Packed ice in the road, ruts as hard as iron, made the going hazardous, and the riders, Beneath the snow, after weeks of severe cold, the ground was frozen solid to a depth of two feet. A foot or more of snow covered the landscape, the remnants of a Christmas storm that had blanketed Massachusetts from In the cold, nearly colorless light of a New England winter, two men on horseback traveled the coast road below Boston, heading north. Spectator.We have too many high sounding words, and too few actions that You cannot be, I know, nor do I wish to see you, an inactive