From This Day Forward by Cokie Roberts Page B

made the floor under the child tremble. The child was so startled, and frightened, that it fell into fits, which never were cured. This may suggest a caution to keep children from sudden frights and surprises.”
    The next year John went off to the Continental Congressin Philadelphia, writing letters to Abigail filled with news of deliberations “grave and serious indeed,” but also loaded with lessons on how to run the farm and raise the children: “Frugality must be our support. Our expenses in this journey will be very great…. The education of our children is never out of my mind. Train them to virtue, habituate them to industry, activity and spirit…. It is time, my dear, for you to teach them French.” Still, important matters like whether to move the law office to Braintree from Boston, he leaves to her judgment of whether the problems with the British are becoming threatening. She provides him with regular accounts of the preparations for war, including “mounting cannon upon Beacon Hill, digging entrenchments upon the Neck, placing cannon there, encamping a regiment there, throwing up breast works, etc., etc.” He tells her, in case of real danger, to “fly to the woods with our children.” How abandoned she must have felt! And how lonely.
    â€œI dare not express to you at 300 miles distance how ardently I long for your return.” She couldn’t wait to see him:
    â€œThe idea plays about my heart, unnerves my hand whilst I write, awakens all the tender sentiments that years have increased and matured, and which when with me were every day dispensing to you.” And she hoped he couldn’t wait to see her: “May the like sensations enter thy breast, and (in spite of all the weighty cares of state) mingle themselves with those I wish to communicate.”
    When the fighting started, she described their house as a scene of confusion: “Soldiers coming in for lodging…sometimes refugees from Boston tired and fatigued seek an asylum for a day or night, a week—you can hardly imagine how we live.” Then, a few weeks later: “Courage I know we have in abundance, conduct I hope we shall not want, but powder—where shall we get a sufficient supply?” With a house full of babies, she was worried about the soldiers’ lack of ammunition. But then, even as battles raged around her,Abigail gives news of the farm: “The English grass will not yield half so great a crop as last year. Fruit promises well, but the caterpillars have been innumerable.” And, ever practical despite the turmoil of war, she asks John to buy her some pins: “The cry for pins is so great that what we used to buy for 7.6 are now 20 shillings and not to be had for that.” He, for once, was duly impressed: “It gives me more pleasure than I can express to learn that you sustain with so much fortitude, the shocks and terrors of the times. You are really brave, my dear, you are an heroine.” But she is a heroine with a complaint: “All the letters I receive from you seem to be written in so much haste, that they scarcely leave room for a social feeling…I want some sentimental effusions of the heart. I am sure you are not destitute of them or are they all absorbed in the great public?” It was a complaint she would have cause to repeat in the years ahead.
    As Abigail struggled with managing the farm, tending to her own and the children’s illnesses and her mother’s death, she also thought a good deal about John’s endeavor. When he first arrived in Philadelphia, he was almost in awe of the men in the Congress, but soon he wrote, “I am wearied to death with the life I lead. The business of the Congress is tedious, beyond expression. This assembly is like no other that ever existed. Every man in it is a great man—an orator, a critic, a statesman, and therefore every man upon every question must show his oratory, his