eye of a tender parent, which it was not
in my power to bestow." Mr. Adams was accompanied by his eldest son,
John Quincy Adams, and, after incurring various hazards from
lightning, storm, and the enemy, arrived in France. The maternal
solicitude of Mrs. Adams relieved itself in part by writing letters to
her son filled with the warmest affection and the most wise counsel.
She urges it upon him "to adhere to those religious sentiments and
principles which were early instilled into your mind, and remember
that you are accountable to your Maker for all your words and actions.
Great learning and superior abilities, should you ever possess them,
will be of little value and small estimation, unless virtue, honor,
truth, and integrity, are added to them. Dear as you are to me, I
would much rather you should have found a grave in the ocean you have
crossed, than see you an immoral, profligate, or graceless child."

As has already been said, Mrs. Adams managed her husband's money
affairs at home. A short extract from one of her business letters to
him may be interesting, and will show how a matter always troublesome
was in such times doubly so: "The safest way, you tell me, of
supplying my wants, is by drafts; but I cannot get hard money for
bills. You had as good tell me to procure diamonds for them; and when
bills will fetch but five for one, hard money will exchange ten, which
I think is very provoking; and I must give at the rate of ten, and
sometimes twenty, for one, for every article I purchase. I blush
whilst I give you a price current; all meat from a dollar to eight
shillings a pound; corn twenty-five dollars, rye thirty, per bushel;
flour two hundred dollars per hundred pounds; potatoes ten dollars per
bushel, &c. I have studied, and do study, every method of economy;
otherwise a mint of money would not support a family. I could not
board our sons under forty dollars a week at school. * * * We have
been greatly distressed for grain. I scarcely know the looks or taste
of biscuit or flour for this four months; yet thousands have been much
worse off, having no grain of any sort." Nor were things then at the
worst; for in October, 1780, we find "meat eight dollars, and butter
twelve, per pound; corn one hundred and twenty dollars, and rye one
hundred and eight, per bushel; tea ninety dollars, and cotton wool
thirty, per pound." But our readers must not suppose that this was
entirely owing to a scarcity of products; these