ship with the French Ambassador, the Chevalier de la Luzerne, and his secretary M. Marbois, the three lying side by side on their cots and thus portrayed by the boy's proud father:
The Ambassador reading out loud, in Blackstone's Discourse at his entrance on his Professorship of the Common Law at the University, and my son correcting the pronunciation of every word and syllable and letter. The Ambassador said he was astonished at my son's knowledge; that he was a master of his own tongue, like a professor. M. Marbois said, Your son teaches us more than you; he has point de graces, point d'éloges.
Charles Francis II, who knew his grandfather only in his old age, says that he was not of a "holiday temperament;" but the diary of John Quincy Adams's early life in Newburyport shows a fairly festive young Puritan, tempted, like his father before him, to frequent truancies from the law, reading Tom Jones and Rousseau's Confessions, shooting, playing the flute, visiting, frequently dancing till three, occasionally drinking till dawn, and regretting it for three days afterward. His social position was secure, his experience and attainments already notable, his career marked out, the reflected glamour of paternal glory gratifying; perhaps he asked himself why he should not rest on his oars while his contemporaries were catching up. Such considerations may occur to an Adams, but they do not remain with him. His ambition widens with
