Adams Family Correspondence, volume 5
I have this moment received your polite Invitation to dinner tomorrow, and am extremely sorry, that a severe Cold, which has confined me a day or two to the House, prevents my accepting it. I had engaged to dine in Company tomorrow if well enough, but could easily set aside the Engagement, if nothing else but that prevented. I should be very happy to see Mr. Shaw, and if I have not that pleasure on this Visit, I will wait on him and Mrs. Shaw at Haverhill very shortly.1
Under No. 1244. in the inclosed Paper, you will find 19. Lines which made a very sensible Impression upon your dearest Friend.2 He requested me to give them to you, which I should have done on Saturday last,3 if I could have readily put my hands upon them.
My Sisters are very sensible of your kind Invitation to them, but as my Brother is gone to Town, and they have no Gentleman to accompany them, they hope you will excuse them.
Thaxter would set up a law practice in Haverhill in May 1784 (Elizabeth Shaw to AA, 6 May 1784, below).
Enclosure not found; the reference is probably to an English newspaper.
AA to JA, 15 Dec., above, says that she saw Thaxter in Braintree upon her return from Boston on Sunday evening, 14 December.
On 26 Dec., Thaxter wrote to AA (Adams Papers) to apologize again for not visiting Braintree. On this occasion, the failure of his baggage to arrive from New York left him with “an absolute Want of Cloathes” with which to appear in polite society. With that letter he enclosed an unidentified “Gazette and Pamphlet” for James Warren.