ough we have one
very near us.

You may easily suppose I have been fully employed, beginning
housekeeping anew, and arranging my family to our no small expenses and
trouble; for I have had bed-linen and table-linen to purchase and make,
spoons and forks to get made of silver,--three dozen of each,--besides
tea furniture, china for the table, servants to procure, etc. The
expense of living abroad I always supposed to be high, but my ideas were
nowise adequate to the thing. I could have furnished myself in the town
of Boston with everything I have, twenty or thirty per cent, cheaper
than I have been able to do it here. Everything which will bear the name
of elegant is imported from England, and if you will have it, you must
pay for it, duties and all. I cannot get a dozen handsome wineglasses
under three guineas, nor a pair of small decanters for less than a
guinea and a half. The only gauze fit to wear is English, at a crown a
yard; so that really a guinea goes no further than a copper with us. For
this house, garden, stables, etc., we give two hundred guineas a year.
Wood is two guineas and a half per cord; coal, six livres the basket of
about two bushels; this article of firing we calculate at one hundred
guineas a year. The difference between coming upon this negotiation to
France, and remaining at the Hague, where the house was already
furnished at the expense of a thousand pounds sterling, will increase
the expense here to six or seven hundred guineas; at a time, too, when
Congress has cut off five hundred guineas from what they have heretofore
given. For our coachman and horses alone (Mr. Adams purchased a coach in
England) we give fifteen guineas a month. It is the policy of this
country to oblige you to a certain number of servants, and one will not
touch what belongs to the business of another, though he or she has time
enough to perform the whole. In the first place, there is a coachman who
does not an individual thing but attend to the carriages and horses;
then the gardener, who has business enough; then comes the cook; then
the _maitre d'hotel_,--his business is to purchase articles in the
family, and oversee that nobody cheats but himself; a _valet de
chambre,_--John serves in this capacity; a _femme de chambre_,--Esther
serves for this, and is worth a dozen others; a _coiffeuse_,--for this
place I have a French girl about nineteen, whom I have been upon the
point of turning-away, because madam will not bru