ever being able to acquire any skill in the fine art of inducing people
to give for things more than it cost to make them. These deficiencies
the younger Adams had already exhibited before the death of his father,
from whom he received on one occasion a thousand pounds, half of which
he promptly loaned to an impecunious friend, and which he would in any
case doubtless have lost, as he soon did the other half, on his own
account. In such incompetent hands the malt business soon fell to be a
liability rather than an asset. Other liabilities accumulated, notably
one incurred by the tax collectors of the town of Boston, of whom Samuel
Adams was one during the years from 1756 to 1764. For one reason or
another, on Adams's part certainly on account of his humane feelings and
general business inefficiency, the collectors fell every year a little
behind in the collections, and one day found themselves declared on the
official records to be indebted to the town in the sum of 9,878 pounds.
This indebtedness Mr. Hutchinson and other gentlemen not well disposed
towards Samuel Adams conveniently and frequently referred to in later
years as a "defalcation."

In this year of 1764, when he had lost his entire patrimony except the
old house in Purchase Street, now somewhat rusty for want of repair,
Samuel Adams was married to Elizabeth Wells. It was his second marriage,
the first having taken place in 1749, of which the fruit was a son and
a daughter. Samuel Adams was then--it was the year of the Sugar
Act--forty-two years old; that is to say, at the age when a man's hair
begins to turn gray, when his character is fixed, when his powers, such
as they are, are fully matured; well known as a "poor provider," an
improvident man who had lost a fair estate, had failed in business, and
was barely able, and sometimes not able, to support his small family.
These mundane matters concerned Samuel Adams but little. To John Adams
he said on one occasion that "he never looked forward in life; never
planned, laid a scheme, or formed a design for laying up anything for
himself or others after him." This was the truth, inexplicable as it
must have seemed to his more provident cousin. It was even less than
the truth: during the years following 1764, Samuel Adams renounced all
pretense of private business, giving himself wholly to public affairs,
while his good wife, with excellent management, made his stipend
as clerk of the Assembly serve for food, and