John Quincy Adams Digital Diary

Day. My time of rising, this month has varied from a quarter past three to half past four, and I have busied the hours till nine, alternately, with bathing and swimming in the Potowmack, and with walking towards the College Hill, gathering plants and Blackberries, and visiting the garden; noticing the growth of the plants there, and talking of them with the Gardener Ousley— Breakfasting at Nine, from ten till five in the afternoon, the current business from the Departments, visitors, despatches and Letters received by the Mails, and reading the Newspapers, slide through the time. Dine from five to six— After dinner, I have occasionally rode out an hour and a half in the carriage, or with my Son John in his Gig. From nine to ten I retire to bed— My health has been languishing, without sickness— From four to five hours of Sleep, not of good repose— A continual habit of costiveness, indigestion, failure of appetite, uncontroulable dejection of Spirits, insensibility to the almost unparalleled blessings with which I have been favoured; a sluggish carelesness of life, and imaginary wish that it were terminated, with a clinging to it, as close as it ever was in the days of most animated hopes—such has been the condition of my body and the disposition of my mind during this and several preceding Months— My confidence in the salubrity of the river bath and swimming is greatly shaken, and yet not wholly gone. I have bathed less than any preceding Summer; usually diving from the Boat, and swimming to the shore. Not less than ten, nor more than twenty minutes in the water— And sometimes substituting the Shower bath, with or without the tub bath, in its stead— With a defective perspiration, and imperfect digestion, there has been a continual inward heat, part of which has come out from time to time on the surface of the skin as it did last Summer, though not quite in so high a degree— Dr Huntt pronounces this to be Eresypelas, and has repeatedly and earnestly advised me to go and pass the remainder of the Summer at the North— To doff the world aside, and bid it pass— To cast off as much as possible all cares public and private; and vegetate myself into a healthier condition— This is the object of my present journey; but in going upon an expedition of purposed idleness my own deepest anxiety is to regain if possible a habit of useful industry.