on is reduced to by adopting a different line of conduct, and
I am determined not to fall into the same error."

It is needless to comment upon such spirit and sense, or upon (p. 017)
such just appreciation of what was feasible, wise, and right for him,
as a New Englander whose surroundings and prospects were widely
different from those of the society about him. He must have been
strongly imbued by nature with the instincts of his birthplace to
have formed, after a seven years' absence at his impressible age, so
correct a judgment of the necessities and possibilities of his own
career in relationship to the people and ideas of his own country.

Home accordingly he came, and by assiduity prepared himself in a very
short time to enter the junior class at Harvard College, whence he was
graduated in high standing in 1787. From there he went to Newburyport,
then a thriving and active seaport enriched by the noble trade of
privateering in addition to more regular maritime business, and entered
as a law student the office of Theophilus Parsons, afterwards the
Chief Justice of Massachusetts. On July 15, 1790, being twenty-three
years old, he was admitted to practice. Immediately afterward he
established himself in Boston, where for a time he felt strangely
solitary. Clients of course did not besiege his doors in the first
year, and he appears to have waited rather stubbornly than cheerfully
for more active days. These came in good time, and during the (p. 018)
second, third, and fourth years, his business grew apace to encouraging
dimensions.

He was, however, doing other work than that of the law, and much more
important in its bearing upon his future career. He could not keep his
thoughts, nor indeed his hands, from public affairs. When, in 1791,
Thomas Paine produced the "Rights of Man," Thomas Jefferson acting as
midwife to usher the bantling before the people of the United States,
Adams's indignation was fired, and he published anonymously a series
of refuting papers over the signature of Publicola. These attracted
much attention, not only at home but also abroad, and were by many
attributed to John Adams. Two years later, during the excitement
aroused by the reception and subsequent outrageous behavior here of
the French minister, Genet, Mr. Adams again published in the Boston
"Centinel" some papers over the signature of Marcellus, discussing
with much ability the then new and perplexing question of the