Page:Familiar Letters of John Adams and his Wife, Abigail Adams, During the Revolution.djvu/19

Rh Abigail. Smith was the second of three daughters. Her father, as has been already mentioned, was the minister of a small Congregational Church in the town of Weymouth, during the middle of the last century. She was born in that town, on the llth of November, 1744, O. S. In her neighborhood there were not many advantages of instruction to be found; and even in Boston, the small metropolis nearest at hand, for reasons already stated, the list of accomplishments within the reach of females was probably very short. She did not enjoy an opportunity to acquire even such as there might have been, for the delicate state of her health forbade the idea of sending her away from home to obtain them. In a letter written in 1817, the year before her death, speaking of her own deficiencies, she says, "My early education did not partake of the abundant opportunities which the present days offer, and which even our common country schools now afford. I never was sent to any school. I was always sick. Female education, in the best families, went no further than writing and arithmetic; in some few and rare instances, music and dancing." Hence it is not unreasonable to suppose that the knowledge gained by her was rather the result of the society into which she was thrown, than of any elaborate instruction.

This fact, that the author of the letters in the present volume never went to any school, is a very important one to a proper estimate of her character. For, whatever may be the decision of the long-vexed question between the advantages of public and those of private education, few persons will deny that they produce marked differences in the formation of character. Seclusion from companions of the same age, at any time of life, is calculated to develop the imaginative faculty at the expense of the judgment; but especially in youth, when the most durable impressions are making. The ordinary consequence, in females of a meditative turn of mind, is the indulgence of romantic and exaggerated sentiments drawn from books, which, if subjected to the ordinary routine of schools, are worn out by the attrition of social intercourse. These ideas, formed in solitude, in early life, often, though not always, remain in the mind, even after the realities of the world surround those who hold them, and counteract the tendency of their conclusions. They are constantly visible in the letters of this volume, even in the midst of the severest trials. They form what may be considered the romantic turn of the author's mind; but in