Yesterday’s note was from the diary of John Quincy Adams, who was writing about Thomas Jefferson in 1803. This entry is about John Quincy Adams from the diary of Ralph Waldo Emerson in 1842.
Mr. Adams chose wisely and according to his constitution, when, on leaving the Presidency, he went into Congress. He is no literary old gentleman, but a bruiser, and loves a melee. When they talk about his age and venerableness and nearness to the grave, he knows better; he is like one of those old cardinals, who, as quick as he is chosen Pope, throws away his crutches and his crookedness, and is as straight as a boy.
John Quincy Adams’s father, John Adams, had been president, and the son pursued his father’s ambition. Emerson thought Adams was better suited to Congress and that rediscovering his place rejuvenated him.
It was a remark recorded privately, not to convince anyone. It just seemed obvious.
I went to an old book to look up a remark about learning Spanish. It reminded me how much I love diaries, memoirs and letters. It’s enlightening to see what people thought of their contemporaries and what they thought of events when they were news. Thinking about many people and many things — Confederate monuments, for example — tends to change with time.
Source: A Treasury of the World’s Great Diaries, edited by Philip Dunaway and Mel Evans; Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1957, p. 224.
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