Letters home.................................

     "I laugh at myself twenty times a Day for my feelings, and meditations and Speculations in which I find myself engaged.  Vanity suffers.  Cold feelings of Unpopularity.  Humble reflections.  Mortifications.  Humiliation.  Plans of Future Life.  Economy.  Retrenching of Expenses.  Farming.  Return to the Bar.  Drawing Writs, arguing causes, taking Clerks.  Humiliations of my Country under foreign Bribes, Measures to counteract them.  All this miserable Nonsense will come and go like evil into the Thoughts of God or Men, approved or unapproved."

-John Adams, from a letter to wife Abigail, December 7, 1796, as the nation awaited the results of the first presidential election not featuring George Washington