The Massachusetts Spy, And Worcester County Advertiser

The President. Every citizen, who has any knowledge at all of our public servants, is acquainted with the remarkably laborious habits of the President. He is perhaps the earliest riser in Washington, and applies himself to the various duties of his high office, with an assiduity which is without example, perhaps in any public man, since the time of President Washington. We recollect learning the fact, that when he was preparing his extremely elaborate report on the intricate subject of weights and measures, which he was, as Secretary of State, required by a resolution of Congress to make—a work which, by its research and comprehensiveness, extorted the praises of English writers—anxious to complete the report before the close of the session, at which he wished to present it, he arose during nearly the whole winter, at 3 o'clock, and occupied himself for three hours before day almost every morning, in completing the task assigned to him. He accomplished it, and the report, comprising between two and three hundred octavo pages, was sent in before Congress adjourned. We mention this incident merely to illustrate the habits of the President, and show how necessary some relaxation must be to a man of sixty, when the heats of our long southern summers add their enfeebling effect to that of constant labor. Without such relaxation, and the renovation of a few weeks annually spent in the bracing sea air of his native climate, his health would suffer, if his life were not endangered by it. He, therefore, almost every summer, makes a visit to Massachusetts of some weeks, which he spends quietly among his kindred and friends, and returns to the seat of government, prepared for the labors of the winter. This has been thought so reasonable, indeed necessary an indulgence, for which he has the example of all his predecessors, that it is rarely that it has been the subject of remark or censure, except by the vulgar and ignorant.

National Intelligencer.