Students: John Adams at 18

For generations, no member of Massachusetts' illustrious Adams family could consider a day complete unless it had been fully chronicled in his diary. "A letter book, a diary, a book of receipts and expenses—these three books, kept without intermission, should be the rule of duty of every man who can read and write," wrote John Quincy Adams in 1834.

According to legend, this stern precept had its origin in 1755, when an earthquake leveled seven chimneys in Braintree, Mass., and so impressed 20-year-old John Adams that he ran to describe it for posterity. Historians now will have to find a different reason for the avalanche of Adams diaries. Last week an earlier diary of the clan patriarch—immediately dubbed "John Adams' Lost Diary"—was unveiled by Harvard University, publisher of the Massachusetts Historical Society's projected 100-volume Adams Papers.

Money & Truth. Discovered last April 27 among the papers of Royall Tyler, an unsuccessful suitor of John's daughter Abigail, in the archives of the Vermont Historical Society, the new diary contains entries from 1753 to 1758, partly overlapping the previous diary and pushing the saga of John's life back two years to his career as a Harvard sophomore. The discovery shows a younger John Adams, says L.H. Butterfield, editor in chief of the Adams Papers, and "sheds a good deal of light on the character and training of the farmer's son who became the second President of the United States."

At Harvard, Adams studied science. He learned "the advantages of gunpowder in war, above those of the Battering ram" and the nature of the solar system: "The planets are kept in their orbits by two forces acting upon them, that of gravity and that which is called their Centrifugal force."

After graduation in 1755, he taught school and studied law, confiding his purpose to his diary in a characteristic balance of idealism, ambition and shrewd observation of his own character and human nature in general: "What are the Motives, that ought to urge me to hard study? The Desire of Fame, Fortune and personal Pleasure. A critical Knowledge of the Greek and Roman and french Poetry, History and Oratory, a thorough comprehensive knowledge of natural, civil, commercial, and Province Law, will draw upon me the Esteem and perhaps Admiration (tho possibly the Envy too) of the Judges of both Courts, of the Lawyers and of Juries, who will spread my Fame thro the Province, will draw around me a Swarm of Clients who will furnish me with a plentiful Provision for my own Support, and for the Increase of my fortune. I shall be able to defend Innocence, to punish Guilt, and to promote Truth and Justice among mankind."