 | Letters of Mrs. Adams, |  |
If I did not write every day, I should lose the
days of the month and of the week; confined all day
on account of the weather, which is foggy, misty, and
wet. You can hardly judge how irksome this confinement
is. When the whole ship is at our service,
it is little better than a prison. We suppose ourselves
near the Western Islands. O dear variety!
how pleasing to the human mind is change. I cannot
find such a fund of entertainment within myself
as not to require outward objects for my amusement.
Nature abounds with variety, and the mind, unless
fixed down by habit, delights in contemplating new
objects, and the variety of scenes which present
themselves to the senses were certainly designed to
prevent our attention from being too long fixed upon
any one object. "This," says a late celebrated
medical writer, "greatly conduces to the health of
the animal frame; your studious people and your
deep thinkers," he observes, "seldom enjoy either
health or spirits."
I have been in much trouble, upon looking over my
letters since I came on board, to find those given me
by my friend, Mrs. Warren, missing. I cannot account
for it in any other way, than that I must have
put them into the pocket of the chaise, when I received
them, which I recollect; and I did not think
to take them out. You remember the day with all
the circumstances, and will accordingly apologize to
our friend, whose goodness, I know, will pardon the
omission, nor add to my mortification by charging it
to inattention.
| Letters of Mrs. Adams, | |