The picture of President Adams's daily life is striking in its simplicity and its laboriousness. This chief magistrate of a great nation was wont to rise before daybreak, often at four or five o'clock even in winter, not unfrequently to build and light his own fire, and to work hard for hours when most persons in busy life were still comfortably slumbering. The forenoon and afternoon he devoted to public affairs, and often he complains that the unbroken stream of visitors gives him little opportunity for hard or continuous labor. Such work he was compelled to do chiefly in the evening; and he did not always make up for early hours of rising by a correspondingly early bedtime; though sometimes in the summer we find him going to bed between eight and nine o'clock, an hour which probably few Presidents have kept since then. He strove to care for his health by daily exercise. In the morning he swam in the Potomac, often for a long (p. 207) time; and more than once he encountered no small risk in this pastime. During the latter part of his Presidential term he tried riding on horseback. At times when the weather compelled him to walk, and business was pressing, he used to get his daily modicum of fresh air before the sun was up. A life of this kind with more of hardship than of relaxation in it was ill fitted to sustain in robust health a man sixty years of age, and it is not surprising that Mr. Adams often complained of feeling ill, dejected, and weary. Yet he never spared himself, nor apparently thought his habits too severe, and actually toward the close of his term he spoke of his trying daily routine as constituting a very agreeable life. He usually began the day by reading "two or three chapters in the Bible with Scott's and Hewlett's Commentaries," being always a profoundly religious man of the old-fashioned school then prevalent in New England.
It could hardly have added to the meagre comforts of such a life to be threatened with assassination. Yet this danger was thrust upon Mr. Adams's attention upon one occasion at least under circumstances which gave to it a very serious aspect. The tranquillity with which he went through the affair showed that his physical courage was as imperturbable as his moral. The risk was protracted throughout a considerable (p. 208) period, but he never let it disturb the even tenor of his daily behavior or warp his actions in the slightest degree, save only that when he was twice or thrice brought face to face with the intending assassin he treated the fellow with somewhat more curt brusqueness than was his wont. But when the danger was over he bore his would-be murderer no malice, and long afterward actually did him a kindly service.