John passed the time en route to the Channel reading the book Jefferson had presented as a parting gift, his own Notes on the State of Virginia, one of two hundred copies he had had privately printed in Paris. The book, Adams would write to Jefferson, was “our meditation all the day long,” implying that he had been reading it aloud to Abigail and Nabby as they rolled toward Calais. The passages on slavery, said Adams, were “worth diamonds.”
