Reflects on his fiancée's character and the nature of vanity. "Vanity pervades both sexes; and I beleive would be difficult to determine in which it preponderates. Your poets live upon it. Politicians all love it. Ministers of state pay men whose constant business is to feed it. Kings and princes would have a sad time without it. Even your grave republicans are fond of it. John Adams, one of our most distinguished ministers in Europe, is one of the vainest men in the world....Were I to distinguish between vanity and pride, I would say, the one raises mortals to heaven, while the other rivets them to the earth." Continues that he will explain later "why I could not vote for Philadelphia notwithstanding the return of Congress rested principally on my vote.(1) But we may still go back. This however is problematical....Be assured it is not resentment that keeps Congress here. Be assured also, that my heart and all its tenderest sensibilities urged me to Philadelphia. But when I can tell you every circumstance, you will join with me in the resistance I gave to our return."(2)
RC (MdHi: McHenry Papers).
1 See James Madison to Edmund Randolph, October 13, 1783, note 3.
2 In his next letter to Peggy two days later, McHenry reported that the congressional "debates of this week have been less violent than those of the last, and that I am intirely relieved from a very troublesome headache which I had some reason to apprehend was the preface to a fever." McHenry Papers, MdHi.