Bibliomania

The younger (John Quincy) Adams abstained from pleasures as resolutely as from vices. He rose hours before the sun to read the Bible – in Greek, German, French, or occasionally English. He walked for exercise and knew exactly how far he traveled, having measured his stride to the toenail’s breadth (two feet six and “eighty-eight one hundreds of an inch”). When weather allowed he swam, combining bath and constitutional in whatever pond, river, gulf, or ocean lay nearby. He preferred his own company to that of most other humans, and he wasn’t especially fond of himself. ~H.W. Brands’ Andrew Jackson: His Life and Times