The oldest son,
John, was afterwards regarded as one of the best talkers in
Boston society, and perhaps the most popular man in the State,
though apt to be on the unpopular side. Palfrey and Dana could be
entertaining when they pleased, and though Charles Sumner could
hardly be called light in hand, he was willing to be amused, and
smiled grandly from time to time; while Mr. Adams, who talked
relatively little, was always a good listener, and laughed over a
witticism till he choked.
By way of educating and amusing the children, Mr. Adams read
much aloud, and was sure to read political literature, especially
when it was satirical, like the speeches of Horace Mann and the
"Epistles" of "Hosea Biglow," with great delight to the youth. So
he read Longfellow and Tennyson as their poems appeared, but the
children took possession of Dickens and Thackeray for themselves.
Both were too modern for tastes founded on Pope and Dr. Johnson.
The boy Henry soon became a desultory reader of every book he
found readable, but these were commonly eighteenth-century
historians because his father's library was full of them. In the
want of positive instincts, he drifted into the mental indolence
of history. So too, he read shelves of eighteenth-century poetry,
but when his father offered his own set of Wordsworth as a gift
on condition of reading it through, he declined.
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