Brooke in Dames and Daughters of Colonial Days furnishes another example of the kindly consideration so common among colonial husbands and wives.  Mrs. John Adams, who was afflicted with headaches, believed that green tea brought relief, and wrote her husband to send her a canister.  Some time afterwards she visited Mrs. Samuel Adams, who refreshed her with this very drink: 

“The scarcity of the article made me ask where she got it.  She replied that her sweetheart sent it to her by Mr. Gerry.  I said nothing, but thought my sweetheart might have been equally kind considering the disease I was visited with, and that was recommended as a bracer.”

“But in reality ‘Goodman’ John had not been so unfeeling as he appeared.  For when he read his wife’s mention of that pain in her head he had been properly concerned and straightway, he says, ’asked Mrs. Yard to send a pound of green tea to you by Mr. Gerry.’  Mrs. Yard readily agreed.  ‘When I came home at night,’ continues the much ‘vexed’ John, I was told Mr. Gerry was gone.  I asked Mrs. Yard if she had sent the canister.  She said Yes and that Mr. Gerry undertook to deliver it with a great deal of pleasure.  From that time I flattered myself you would have the poor relief of a dish of good tea, and I never conceived a single doubt that you had received it until Mr. Gerry’s return.  I asked him accidently whether he had delivered it, and he said, ’Yes; to Mr. Samuel Adams’s lady.’"[117]

American letters of the eighteenth century abound in expressions of love and in mention of gifts sent home as tokens of that love.  Thus, Mrs. Washington writes her brother in 1778:  “Please to give little Patty a kiss for me.  I have sent her a pair of shoes—­there was not a doll to be got in the city of Philadelphia, or I would have sent her one (the shoes are in a bundle for my mamma)."[118] And again from New York in 1789 she writes:  “I have by Mrs. Sims sent for a watch, it is one of the cargoe that I have so often mentioned to you, that was expected, I hope is such a one as will please you—­it is of the newest fashion, if that has any influence in your taste....  The chain is of Mr. Lear’s choosing and such as Mrs. Adams the vice President’s Lady and those in the polite circle wares and will last as long as the fashion—­and by that time you can get another of a fashionable kind—­I send to dear Maria a piece of chintz to make her a frock—­the piece of muslin I hope is long enough for an apron for you, and in exchange for it, I beg you will give me the worked muslin apron you have like my gown that I made just before I left home of worked muslin as I wish to make a petticoat of the two aprons,—­for my gown ... kiss Maria I send her two little handkerchiefs to wipe her nose..."[119]

XI.  Woman’s Sphere