The Education of Henry Adams

CHAPTER XXIII

SI­LENCE (1894-1898)

The con­vul­sion of 1893 left its vic­tims in dead-​wa­ter, and closed much ed­uca­tion. While the coun­try braced it­self up to an ef­fort such as no one had thought with­in its pow­ers, the in­di­vid­ual crawled as he best could, through the wreck, and found many val­ues of life up­set. But for con­nect­ing the nine­teenth and twen­ti­eth cen­turies, the four years, 1893 to 1897, had no val­ue in the dra­ma of ed­uca­tion, and might be left out. Much that had made life pleas­ant be­tween 1870 and 1890 per­ished in the ru­in, and among the ear­li­est wreck­age had been the for­tunes of Clarence King. The les­son taught what­ev­er the by­stander chose to read in it; but to Adams it seemed sin­gu­lar­ly full of moral, if he could but un­der­stand it. In 1871 he had thought King’s ed­uca­tion ide­al, and his per­son­al fit­ness un­ri­valled. No oth­er young Amer­ican ap­proached him for the com­bi­na­tion of chances — phys­ical en­er­gy, so­cial stand­ing, men­tal scope and train­ing, wit, ge­nial­ity, and sci­ence, that seemed su­perla­tive­ly Amer­ican and ir­re­sistibly strong. His near­est ri­val was Alexan­der Agas­siz, and, as far as their friends knew, no one else could be classed with them in the run­ning. The re­sult of twen­ty years’ ef­fort proved that the the­ory of sci­en­tif­ic ed­uca­tion failed where most the­ory fails — for want of mon­ey. Even Hen­ry Adams, who kept him­self, as he thought, quite out­side of ev­ery pos­si­ble fi­nan­cial risk, had been caught in the cogs, and held for months over the gulf of bankrupt­cy, saved on­ly by the chance that the whole class of mil­lion­aires were more or less bankrupt too, and the banks were forced to let the mice es­cape with the rats; but, in sum, ed­uca­tion with­out cap­ital could al­ways be tak­en by the throat and forced to dis­gorge its gains, nor was it helped by the knowl­edge that no one in­tend­ed it, but that all alike suf­fered. Whether vol­un­tary or me­chan­ical the re­sult for ed­uca­tion was the same. The fail­ure of the sci­en­tif­ic scheme, with­out mon­ey to back it, was fla­grant.

The sci­en­tif­ic scheme in the­ory was alone sound, for sci­ence should be equiv­alent to mon­ey; in prac­tice sci­ence was help­less with­out mon­ey. The weak hold­er was, in his own lan­guage, sure to be frozen out. Ed­uca­tion must fit the com­plex con­di­tions of a new so­ci­ety, al­ways ac­cel­er­at­ing its move­ment, and its fit­ness could be known on­ly from suc­cess. One looked about for ex­am­ples of suc­cess among the ed­ucat­ed of one’s time — the men born in the thir­ties, and trained to pro­fes­sions. With­in one’s im­me­di­ate ac­quain­tance, three were typ­ical: John Hay, Whitelaw Reid, and William C. Whit­ney; all of whom owed their free hand to mar­riage, ed­uca­tion serv­ing on­ly for or­na­ment, but among whom, in 1893, William C. Whit­ney was far and away the most pop­ular type.

News­pa­pers might prate about wealth till com­mon­place print was ex­haust­ed, but as mat­ter of habit, few Amer­icans en­vied the very rich for any­thing the most of them got out of mon­ey. New York might oc­ca­sion­al­ly fear them, but more of­ten laughed or sneered at them, and nev­er showed them re­spect. Scarce­ly one of the very rich men held any po­si­tion in so­ci­ety by virtue of his wealth, or could have been elect­ed to an of­fice, or even in­to a good club. Set­ting aside the few, like Pier­pont Mor­gan, whose so­cial po­si­tion had lit­tle to do with greater or less wealth, rich­es were in New York no ob­ject of en­vy on ac­count of the joys they brought in their train, and Whit­ney was not even one of the very rich; yet in his case the en­vy was pal­pa­ble. There was rea­son for it. Al­ready in 1893 Whit­ney had fin­ished with pol­itics af­ter hav­ing grat­ified ev­ery am­bi­tion, and swung the coun­try al­most at his will; he had thrown away the usu­al ob­jects of po­lit­ical am­bi­tion like the ash­es of smoked cigarettes; had turned to oth­er amuse­ments, sa­ti­at­ed ev­ery taste, gorged ev­ery ap­petite, won ev­ery ob­ject that New York af­ford­ed, and, not yet sat­is­fied, had car­ried his field of ac­tiv­ity abroad, un­til New York no longer knew what most to en­vy, his hors­es or his hous­es. He had suc­ceed­ed pre­cise­ly where Clarence King had failed.

Bare­ly forty years had passed since all these men start­ed in a bunch to race for pow­er, and the re­sults were fixed be­yond re­ver­sal; but one knew no bet­ter in 1894 than in 1854 what an Amer­ican ed­uca­tion ought to be in or­der to count as suc­cess. Even grant­ing that it count­ed as mon­ey, its val­ue could not be called gen­er­al. Amer­ica con­tained scores of men worth five mil­lions or up­wards, whose lives were no more worth liv­ing than those of their cooks, and to whom the task of mak­ing mon­ey equiv­alent to ed­uca­tion of­fered more dif­fi­cul­ties than to Adams the task of mak­ing ed­uca­tion equiv­alent to mon­ey. So­cial po­si­tion seemed to have val­ue still, while ed­uca­tion count­ed for noth­ing. A math­emati­cian, lin­guist, chemist, elec­tri­cian, en­gi­neer, if for­tu­nate might av­er­age a val­ue of ten dol­lars a day in the open mar­ket. An ad­min­is­tra­tor, or­ga­niz­er, man­ag­er, with me­di­ae­val qual­ities of en­er­gy and will, but no ed­uca­tion be­yond his spe­cial branch, would prob­ably be worth at least ten times as much. So­ci­ety had failed to dis­cov­er what sort of ed­uca­tion suit­ed it best. Wealth val­ued so­cial po­si­tion and clas­si­cal ed­uca­tion as high­ly as ei­ther of these val­ued wealth, and the wom­en still tend­ed to keep the scales even. For any­thing Adams could see he was him­self as con­tent­ed as though he had been ed­ucat­ed; while Clarence King, whose ed­uca­tion was ex­act­ly suit­ed to the­ory, had failed; and Whit­ney, who was no bet­ter ed­ucat­ed than Adams, had achieved phe­nom­enal suc­cess.

Had Adams in 1894 been start­ing in life as he did in 1854, he must have re­peat­ed that all he asked of ed­uca­tion was the facile use of the four old tools: Math­emat­ics, French, Ger­man, and Span­ish. With these he could still make his way to any ob­ject with­in his vi­sion, and would have a de­ci­sive ad­van­tage over nine ri­vals in ten. States­man or lawyer, chemist or elec­tri­cian, priest or pro­fes­sor, na­tive or for­eign, he would fear none.

King’s break­down, phys­ical as well as fi­nan­cial, brought the in­di­rect gain to Adams that, on re­cov­er­ing strength, King in­duced him to go to Cu­ba, where, in Jan­uary, 1894, they drift­ed in­to the lit­tle town of San­ti­ago. The pic­turesque Cuban so­ci­ety, which King knew well, was more amus­ing than any oth­er that one had yet dis­cov­ered in the whole broad world, but made no pro­fes­sion of teach­ing any­thing un­less it were Cuban Span­ish or the dan­za; and nei­ther on his own nor on King’s ac­count did the vis­itor ask any lofti­er study than that of the buz­zards float­ing on the trade-​wind down the val­ley to Dos Bo­cas, or the col­ors of sea and shore at sun­rise from the height of the Gran Piedra; but, as though they were still twen­ty years old and rev­olu­tion were as young as they, the de­cay­ing fab­ric, which had nev­er been sol­id, fell on their heads and drew them with it in­to an ocean of mis­chief. In the half-​cen­tu­ry be­tween 1850 and 1900, em­pires were al­ways falling on one’s head, and, of all lessons, these con­stant po­lit­ical con­vul­sions taught least. Since the time of Rame­ses, rev­olu­tions have raised more doubts than they solved, but they have some­times the mer­it of chang­ing one’s point of view, and the Cuban re­bel­lion served to sev­er the last tie that at­tached Adams to a Demo­crat­ic ad­min­is­tra­tion. He thought that Pres­ident Cleve­land could have set­tled the Cuban ques­tion, with­out war, had he cho­sen to do his du­ty, and this feel­ing, gen­er­al­ly held by the Demo­crat­ic Par­ty, joined with the stress of eco­nom­ical needs and the gold stan­dard to break in­to bits the old or­ga­ni­za­tion and to leave no choice be­tween par­ties. The new Amer­ican, whether con­scious­ly or not, had turned his back on the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry be­fore he was done with it; the gold stan­dard, the pro­tec­tive sys­tem, and the laws of mass could have no oth­er out­come, and, as so of­ten be­fore, the move­ment, once ac­cel­er­at­ed by at­tempt­ing to im­pede it, had the ad­di­tion­al, bru­tal con­se­quence of crush­ing equal­ly the good and the bad that stood in its way.

The les­son was old — so old that it be­came te­dious. One had stud­ied noth­ing else since child­hood, and wea­ried of it. For yet an­oth­er year Adams lin­gered on these out­skirts of the vor­tex, among the pic­turesque, prim­itive types of a world which had nev­er been fair­ly in­volved in the gen­er­al mo­tion, and were the more amus­ing for their tor­por. Af­ter pass­ing the win­ter with King in the West In­dies, he passed the sum­mer with Hay in the Yel­low­stone, and found there lit­tle to study. The Gey­sers were an old sto­ry; the Snake Riv­er posed no vi­tal statis­tics ex­cept in its ford­ings; even the Tetons were as calm as they were love­ly; while the wapi­ti and bear, in­no­cent of strikes and cor­ners, laid no traps. In re­turn the par­ty treat­ed them with af­fec­tion. Nev­er did a band less bloody or blood­thirsty wan­der over the roof of the con­ti­nent. Hay loved as lit­tle as Adams did, the la­bor of skin­ning and butcher­ing big game; he had even out­grown the se­date, mid­dle-​aged, med­ita­tive joy of duck-​shoot­ing, and found the trout of the Yel­low­stone too easy a prey. Hal­lett Phillips him­self, who man­aged the par­ty loved to play In­di­an hunter with­out hunt­ing so much as a field­mouse; Id­dings the ge­ol­ogist was re­duced to shoot­ing on­ly for the ta­ble, and the guile­less prat­tle of Bil­ly Hofer alone taught the sim­ple life. Com­pared with the Rock­ies of 1871, the sense of wild­ness had van­ished; one saw no pos­si­ble ad­ven­tures ex­cept to break one’s neck as in chas­ing an aniseed fox. On­ly the more in­tel­li­gent ponies scent­ed an oc­ca­sion­al friend­ly and so­cia­ble bear.

When the par­ty came out of the Yel­low­stone, Adams went on alone to Seat­tle and Van­cou­ver to in­spect the last Amer­ican rail­way sys­tems yet un­tried. They, too, of­fered lit­tle new learn­ing, and no soon­er had he fin­ished this de­bauch of North­west­ern ge­og­ra­phy than with des­per­ate thirst for ex­haust­ing the Amer­ican field, he set out for Mex­ico and the Gulf, mak­ing a sweep of the Caribbean and clear­ing up, in these six or eight months, at least twen­ty thou­sand miles of Amer­ican land and wa­ter.

He was be­gin­ning to think, when he got back to Wash­ing­ton in April, 1895, that he knew enough about the edges of life — trop­ical is­lands, moun­tain soli­tudes, ar­cha­ic law, and ret­ro­grade types. In­finite­ly more amus­ing and in­com­pa­ra­bly more pic­turesque than civ­iliza­tion, they ed­ucat­ed on­ly artists, and, as one’s six­ti­eth year ap­proached, the artist be­gan to die; on­ly a cer­tain in­tense cere­bral rest­less­ness sur­vived which no longer re­spond­ed to sen­su­al stim­ulants; one was driv­en from beau­ty to beau­ty as though art were a trot­ting-​match. For this, one was in some de­gree pre­pared, for the old man had been a stage-​type since dra­ma be­gan; but one felt some per­plex­ity to ac­count for fail­ure on the op­po­site or me­chan­ical side, where noth­ing but cere­bral ac­tion was need­ed.

Tak­ing for grant­ed that the al­ter­na­tive to art was arith­metic, plunged deep in­to statis­tics, fan­cy­ing that ed­uca­tion would find the surest bot­tom there; and the study proved the eas­iest he had ev­er ap­proached. Even the Gov­ern­ment vol­un­teered un­lim­it­ed statis­tics, end­less columns of fig­ures, bot­tom­less av­er­ages mere­ly for the ask­ing. At the Sta­tis­ti­cal Bu­reau, Wor­thing­ton Ford sup­plied any ma­te­ri­al that cu­rios­ity could imag­ine for fill­ing the vast gaps of ig­no­rance, and meth­ods for ap­ply­ing the plas­ters of fact. One seemed for a while to be win­ning ground, and one’s av­er­ages pro­ject­ed them­selves as laws in­to the fu­ture. Per­haps the most per­plex­ing part of the study lay in the at­ti­tude of the statis­ti­cians, who showed no en­thu­si­as­tic con­fi­dence in their own fig­ures. They should have reached cer­tain­ty, but they talked like oth­er men who knew less. The method did not re­sult faith. In­deed, ev­ery in­crease of mass — of vol­ume and ve­loc­ity — seemed to bring in new el­ements, and, at last, a schol­ar, fresh in arith­metic and ig­no­rant of al­ge­bra, fell in­to a su­per­sti­tious ter­ror of com­plex­ity as the sink of facts. Noth­ing came out as it should. In prin­ci­ple, ac­cord­ing to fig­ures, any one could set up or pull down a so­ci­ety. One could frame no sort of sat­is­fac­to­ry an­swer to the con­struc­tive doc­trines of Adam Smith, or to the de­struc­tive crit­icisms of Karl Marx or to the an­ar­chis­tic im­pre­ca­tions of Elisee Reclus. One rev­elled at will in the ru­in of ev­ery so­ci­ety in the past, and re­joiced in prov­ing the prospec­tive over­throw of ev­ery so­ci­ety that seemed pos­si­ble in the fu­ture; but mean­while these so­ci­eties which vi­olat­ed ev­ery law, moral, arith­meti­cal, and eco­nom­ical, not on­ly prop­agat­ed each oth­er, but pro­duced al­so fresh com­plex­ities with ev­ery prop­aga­tion and de­vel­oped mass with ev­ery com­plex­ity.

The hu­man fac­tor was worse still. Since the stu­pe­fy­ing dis­cov­ery of Pteraspis in 1867, noth­ing had so con­fused the stu­dent as the con­duct of mankind in the fin-​de-​siecle. No one seemed very much con­cerned about this world or the fu­ture, un­less it might be the an­ar­chists, and they on­ly be­cause they dis­liked the present. Adams dis­liked the present as much as they did, and his in­ter­est in fu­ture so­ci­ety was be­com­ing slight, yet he was kept alive by ir­ri­ta­tion at find­ing his life so thin and fruit­less. Mean­while he watched mankind march on, like a train of pack-​hors­es on the Snake Riv­er, tum­bling from one morass in­to an­oth­er, and at short in­ter­vals, for no rea­son but tem­per, falling to butch­ery, like Cain. Since 1850, mas­sacres had be­come so com­mon that so­ci­ety scarce­ly no­ticed them un­less they summed up hun­dreds of thou­sands, as in Ar­me­nia; wars had been al­most con­tin­uous, and were be­gin­ning again in Cu­ba, threat­en­ing in South Africa, and pos­si­ble in Manchuria; yet im­par­tial judges thought them all not mere­ly un­nec­es­sary, but fool­ish — in­duced by greed of the coars­est class, as though the Pharaohs or the Ro­mans were still rob­bing their neigh­bors. The rob­bery might be nat­ural and in­evitable, but the mur­der seemed al­to­geth­er ar­cha­ic.

At one mo­ment of per­plex­ity to ac­count for this trait of Pteraspis, or shark, which seemed to have sur­vived ev­ery moral im­prove­ment of so­ci­ety, he took to study of the re­li­gious press. Pos­si­bly growth m hu­man na­ture might show it­self there. He found no need to speak un­kind­ly of it; but, as an agent of mo­tion, he pre­ferred on the whole the vig­or of the shark, with its chances of bet­ter­ment; and he very grave­ly doubt­ed, from his aching con­scious­ness of re­li­gious void, whether any large frac­tion of so­ci­ety cared for a fu­ture life, or even for the present one, thir­ty years hence. Not an act, or an ex­pres­sion, or an im­age, showed depth of faith or hope.

The ob­ject of ed­uca­tion, there­fore, was changed. For many years it had lost it­self in study­ing what the world had ceased to care for; if it were to be­gin again, it must try to find out what the mass of mankind did care for, and why. Re­li­gion, pol­itics, statis­tics, trav­el had thus far led to noth­ing. Even the Chica­go Fair had on­ly con­fused the roads. Ac­ci­den­tal ed­uca­tion could go no fur­ther, for one’s mind was al­ready lit­tered and stuffed be­yond hope with the mil­lions of chance im­ages stored away with­out or­der in the mem­ory. One might as well try to ed­ucate a grav­el-​pit. The task was fu­tile, which dis­turbed a stu­dent less than the dis­cov­ery that, in pur­su­ing it, he was be­com­ing him­self ridicu­lous. Noth­ing is more tire­some than a su­per­an­nu­at­ed ped­agogue.

For the mo­ment he was res­cued, as of­ten be­fore, by a wom­an. To­wards mid­sum­mer, 1895, Mrs. Cabot Lodge bade him fol­low her to Eu­rope with the Sen­ator and her two sons. The study of his­to­ry is use­ful to the his­to­ri­an by teach­ing him his ig­no­rance of wom­en; and the mass of this ig­no­rance crush­es one who is fa­mil­iar enough with what are called his­tor­ical sources to re­al­ize how few wom­en have ev­er been known. The wom­an who is known on­ly through a man is known wrong, and ex­cept­ing one or two like Mme. de Se­vi­gne, no wom­an has pic­tured her­self. The Amer­ican wom­an of the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry will live on­ly as the man saw her; prob­ably she will be less known than the wom­an of the eigh­teenth; none of the fe­male de­scen­dants of Abi­gail Adams can ev­er be near­ly so fa­mil­iar as her let­ters have made her; and all this is pure loss to his­to­ry, for the Amer­ican wom­an of the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry was much bet­ter com­pa­ny than the Amer­ican man; she was prob­ably much bet­ter com­pa­ny than her grand­moth­ers. With Mrs. Lodge and her hus­band, Sen­ator since 1893, Adams’s re­la­tions had been those of el­der broth­er or un­cle since 1871 when Cabot Lodge had left his ex­am­ina­tion-​pa­pers on As­sis­tant Pro­fes­sor Adams’s desk, and crossed the street to Christ Church in Cam­bridge to get mar­ried. With Lodge him­self, as schol­ar, fel­low in­struc­tor, co-​ed­itor of the North Amer­ican Re­view, and po­lit­ical re­former from 1873 to 1878, he had worked in­ti­mate­ly, but with him af­ter­wards as politi­cian he had not much re­la­tion; and since Lodge had suf­fered what Adams thought the mis­for­tune of be­com­ing not on­ly a Sen­ator but a Sen­ator from Mas­sachusetts — a sin­gu­lar so­cial re­la­tion which Adams had known on­ly as fa­tal to friends — a su­per­sti­tious stu­dent, in­ti­mate with the laws of his­tor­ical fa­tal­ity, would rather have rec­og­nized him on­ly as an en­emy; but apart from this ac­ci­dent he val­ued Lodge high­ly, and in the waste places of av­er­age hu­man­ity had been great­ly de­pen­dent on his house. Sen­ators can nev­er be ap­proached with safe­ty, but a Sen­ator who has a very su­pe­ri­or wife and sev­er­al su­pe­ri­or chil­dren who feel no def­er­ence for Sen­ators as such, may be ap­proached at times with rel­ative im­puni­ty while they keep him un­der re­straint.

Where Mrs. Lodge sum­moned, one fol­lowed with grat­itude, and so it chanced that in Au­gust one found one’s self for the first time at Caen, Coutances, and Mont-​Saint-​Michel in Nor­mandy. If his­to­ry had a chap­ter with which he thought him­self fa­mil­iar, it was the twelfth and thir­teenth cen­turies; yet so lit­tle has la­bor to do with knowl­edge that these bare play­grounds of the lec­ture sys­tem turned in­to green and ver­durous vir­gin forests mere­ly through the medi­um of younger eyes and fresh­er minds. His Ger­man bias must have giv­en his youth a ter­ri­ble twist, for the Lodges saw at a glance what he had thought unessen­tial be­cause un-​Ger­man. They breathed na­tive air in the Nor­mandy of 1200, a com­pli­ment which would have seemed to the Sen­ator lack­ing in taste or even in sense when ad­dressed to one of a class of men who passed life in try­ing to per­suade them­selves and the pub­lic that they breathed noth­ing less Amer­ican than a bliz­zard; but this at­mo­sphere, in the touch of a re­al emo­tion, be­trayed the un­con­scious hu­mor of the sen­ato­ri­al mind. In the thir­teenth cen­tu­ry, by an un­usu­al chance, even a Sen­ator be­came nat­ural, sim­ple, in­ter­est­ed, cul­ti­vat­ed, artis­tic, lib­er­al — ge­nial.

Through the Lodge eyes the old prob­lem be­came new and per­son­al; it threw off all as­so­ci­ation with the Ger­man lec­ture-​room. One could not at first see what this nov­el­ty meant; it had the air of mere an­ti­quar­ian emo­tion like Wen­lock Abbey and Pteraspis; but it ex­pelled ar­cha­ic law and an­ti­quar­ian­ism once for all, with­out seem­ing con­scious of it; and Adams drift­ed back to Wash­ing­ton with a new sense of his­to­ry. Again he wan­dered south, and in April re­turned to Mex­ico with the Camerons to study the charms of pulque and Chur­riguer­resque ar­chi­tec­ture. In May he ran through Eu­rope again with Hay, as far south as Raven­na. There came the end of the pas­sage. Af­ter thus cov­er­ing once more, in 1896, many thou­sand miles of the old trails, Adams went home Oc­to­ber, with ev­ery one else, to elect McKin­ley Pres­ident and start the world anew.

For the old world of pub­lic men and mea­sures since 1870, Adams wept no tears. With­in or with­out, dur­ing or af­ter it, as par­ti­san or his­to­ri­an, he nev­er saw any­thing to ad­mire in it, or any­thing he want­ed to save; and in this re­spect he re­flect­ed on­ly the pub­lic mind which bal­anced it­self so ex­act­ly be­tween the un­pop­ular­ity of both par­ties as to ex­press no sym­pa­thy with ei­ther. Even among the most pow­er­ful men of that gen­er­ation he knew none who had a good word to say for it. No pe­ri­od so thor­ough­ly or­di­nary had been known in Amer­ican pol­itics since Christo­pher Colum­bus first dis­turbed the bal­ance of Amer­ican so­ci­ety; but the nat­ural re­sult of such lack of in­ter­est in pub­lic af­fairs, in a small so­ci­ety like that of Wash­ing­ton, led an idle by­stander to de­pend ab­ject­ly on in­ti­ma­cy of pri­vate re­la­tion. One dragged one’s self down the long vista of Penn­syl­va­nia Av­enue, by lean­ing heav­ily on one’s friends, and avoid­ing to look at any­thing else. Thus life had grown nar­row with years, more and more con­cen­trat­ed on the cir­cle of hous­es round La Fayette Square, which had no di­rect or per­son­al share in pow­er ex­cept in the case of Mr. Blaine whose tu­mul­tuous strug­gle for ex­is­tence held him apart. Sud­den­ly Mr. McKin­ley en­tered the White House and laid his hand heav­ily on this spe­cial group. In a mo­ment the whole nest so slow­ly con­struct­ed, was torn to pieces and scat­tered over the world. Adams found him­self alone. John Hay took his or­ders for Lon­don. Rock­hill de­part­ed to Athens. Ce­cil Spring-​Rice had been buried in Per­sia. Cameron re­fused to re­main in pub­lic life ei­ther at home or abroad, and broke up his house on the Square. On­ly the Lodges and Roo­sevelts re­mained, but even they were at once ab­sorbed in the in­ter­ests of pow­er. Since 1861, no such so­cial con­vul­sion had oc­curred.

Even this was not quite the worst. To one whose in­ter­ests lay chiefly in for­eign af­fairs, and who, at this mo­ment, felt most strong­ly the night­mare of Cuban, Hawai­ian, and Nicaraguan chaos, the man in the State De­part­ment seemed more im­por­tant than the man in the White House. Adams knew no one in the Unit­ed States fit to man­age these mat­ters in the face of a hos­tile Eu­rope, and had no can­di­date to pro­pose; but he was shocked be­yond all re­straints of ex­pres­sion to learn that the Pres­ident meant to put Sen­ator John Sher­man in the State De­part­ment in or­der to make a place for Mr. Han­na in the Sen­ate. Grant him­self had done noth­ing that seemed so bad as this to one who had lived long enough to dis­tin­guish be­tween the ways of pres­iden­tial job­bery, if not be­tween the jobs. John Sher­man, oth­er­wise ad­mirably fit­ted for the place, a friend­ly in­flu­ence for near­ly forty years, was no­to­ri­ous­ly fee­ble and quite se­nile, so that the in­trigue seemed to Adams the be­tray­al of an old friend as well as of the State De­part­ment. One might have shrugged one’s shoul­ders had the Pres­ident named Mr. Han­na his Sec­re­tary of State, for Mr. Han­na was a man of force if not of ex­pe­ri­ence, and se­lec­tions much worse than this had of­ten turned out well enough; but John Sher­man must in­evitably and trag­ical­ly break down.

The prospect for once was not less vile than the men. One can bear cold­ly the job­bery of en­emies, but not that of friends, and to Adams this kind of job­bery seemed al­ways in­finite­ly worse than all the pet­ty mon­ey bribes ev­er ex­ploit­ed by the news­pa­pers. Nor was the mat­ter im­proved by hints that the Pres­ident might call John Hay to the De­part­ment when­ev­er John Sher­man should re­tire. In­deed, had Hay been even un­con­scious­ly par­ty to such an in­trigue, he would have put an end, once for all, to fur­ther con­cern in pub­lic af­fairs on his friend’s part; but even with­out this last dis­as­ter, one felt that Wash­ing­ton had be­come no longer hab­it­able. Noth­ing was left there but soli­tary con­tem­pla­tion of Mr. McKin­ley’s ways which were not like­ly to be more amus­ing than the ways of his pre­de­ces­sors; or of sen­ato­ri­al ways, which of­fered no nov­el­ty of what the French lan­guage ex­pres­sive­ly calls em­bete­ment; or of poor Mr. Sher­man’s ways which would sure­ly cause an­guish to his friends. Once more, one must go!

Noth­ing was eas­ier! On and off, one had done the same thing since the year 1858, at fre­quent in­ter­vals, and had now reached the month of March, 1897; yet, as the whole re­sult of six years’ dogged ef­fort to be­gin a new ed­uca­tion, one could not rec­om­mend it to the young. The out­look lacked hope. The ob­ject of trav­el had be­come more and more dim, ev­er since the gib­ber­ing ghost of the Civ­il Law had been locked in its dark clos­et, as far back as 1860. Noah’s dove had not searched the earth for rest­ing-​places so care­ful­ly, or with so lit­tle suc­cess. Any spot on land or wa­ter sat­is­fies a dove who wants and finds rest; but no perch suits a dove of six­ty years old, alone and un­ed­ucat­ed, who has lost his taste even for olives. To this, al­so, the young may be driv­en, as ed­uca­tion, end the les­son fails in hu­mor; but it may be worth know­ing to some of them that the plan­et of­fers hard­ly a dozen places where an el­der­ly man can pass a week alone with­out en­nui, and none at all where he can pass a year.

Ir­ri­tat­ed by such com­plaints, the world nat­ural­ly an­swers that no man of six­ty should live, which is doubt­less true, though not orig­inal. The man of six­ty, with a cer­tain ir­ri­tabil­ity prop­er to his years, re­torts that the world has no busi­ness to throw on him the task of re­mov­ing its car­rion, and that while he re­mains he has a right to re­quire amuse­ment — or at least ed­uca­tion, since this costs noth­ing to any one — and that a world which can­not ed­ucate, will not amuse, and is ug­ly be­sides, has even less right to ex­ist than he. Both views seem sound; but the world weari­ly ob­jects to be called by ep­ithets what so­ci­ety al­ways ad­mits in prac­tice; for no one likes to be told that he is a bore, or ig­no­rant, or even ug­ly; and hav­ing noth­ing to say in its de­fence, it re­joins that, what­ev­er li­cense is par­don­able in youth, the man of six­ty who wish­es con­sid­er­ation had bet­ter hold his tongue. This truth al­so has the de­fect of be­ing too true. The rule holds equal­ly for men of half that age On­ly the very young have the right to be­tray their ig­no­rance or ill-​breed­ing. El­der­ly peo­ple com­mon­ly know enough not to be­tray them­selves.

Ex­cep­tions are plen­ty on both sides, as the Sen­ate knew to its acute suf­fer­ing; but young or old, wom­en or men, seemed agreed on one point with sin­gu­lar una­nim­ity; each praised si­lence in oth­ers. Of all char­ac­ter­is­tics in hu­man na­ture, this has been one of the most abid­ing. Mere su­per­fi­cial glean­ing of what, in the long his­to­ry of hu­man ex­pres­sion, has been said by the fool or un­said by the wise, shows that, for once, no dif­fer­ence of opin­ion has ev­er ex­ist­ed on this. “Even a fool,” said the wis­est of men, “when he hold­eth his peace, is count­ed wise,” and still more of­ten, the wis­est of men, when he spoke the high­est wis­dom, has been count­ed a fool. They agreed on­ly on the mer­its of si­lence in oth­ers. Socrates made re­marks in its fa­vor, which should have struck the Athe­ni­ans as new to them; but of late the rep­eti­tion had grown tire­some. Thomas Car­lyle vo­cif­er­at­ed his ad­mi­ra­tion of it. Matthew Arnold thought it the best form of ex­pres­sion; and Adams thought Matthew Arnold the best form of ex­pres­sion in his time. Al­ger­non Swin­burne called it the most no­ble to the end. Al­fred de Vi­gny’s dy­ing wolf re­marked: –

“A voir ce que l’on fut sur terre et ce qu’on laisse, Seul le si­lence est grand; tout le reste est faib­lesse.” “When one thinks what one leaves in the world when one dies, On­ly si­lence is strong, — all the rest is but lies.”

Even By­ron, whom a more bril­liant era of ge­nius seemed to have de­cid­ed to be but an in­dif­fer­ent po­et, had ven­tured to af­firm that –

“The Alp’s snow sum­mit near­er heav­en is seen Than the vol­cano’s fierce erup­tive crest;”

with oth­er vers­es, to the ef­fect that words are but a “tem­po­rary tor­tur­ing flame”; of which no one knew more than him­self. The ev­idence of the po­ets could not be more em­phat­ic: –

“Silent, while years en­grave the brow! Silent, — the best are silent now!”

Al­though none of these great ge­nius­es had shown faith in si­lence as a cure for their own ills or ig­no­rance, all of them, and all phi­los­ophy af­ter them, af­firmed that no man, even at six­ty, had ev­er been known to at­tain knowl­edge; but that a very few were be­lieved to have at­tained ig­no­rance, which was in re­sult the same. More than this, in ev­ery so­ci­ety worth the name, the man of six­ty had been en­cour­aged to ride this hob­by — the Pur­suit of Ig­no­rance in Si­lence — as though it were the eas­iest way to get rid of him. In Amer­ica the si­lence was more op­pres­sive than the ig­no­rance; but per­haps else­where the world might still hide some haunt of fu­til­itar­ian si­lence where con­tent reigned — al­though long search had not re­vealed it — and so the pil­grim­age be­gan anew!

The first step led to Lon­don where John Hay was to be es­tab­lished. One had seen so many Amer­ican Min­is­ters re­ceived in Lon­don that the Lord Cham­ber­lain him­self scarce­ly knew more about it; ed­uca­tion could not be ex­pect­ed there; but there Adams ar­rived, April 21, 1897, as though thir­ty-​six years were so many days, for Queen Vic­to­ria still reigned and one saw lit­tle change in St. James’s Street. True, Carl­ton House Ter­race, like the streets of Rome, ac­tu­al­ly squeaked and gib­bered with ghosts, till one felt like Odysseus be­fore the press of shad­ows, daunt­ed by a “blood­less fear”; but in spring Lon­don is pleas­ant, and it was more cheery than ev­er in May, 1897, when ev­ery one was wel­com­ing the re­turn of life af­ter the long win­ter since 1893. One’s for­tunes, or one’s friends’ for­tunes, were again in flood.

This amuse­ment could not be pro­longed, for one found one’s self the old­est En­glish­man in Eng­land, much too fa­mil­iar with fam­ily jars bet­ter for­got­ten, and old tra­di­tions bet­ter un­known. No wrin­kled Tannhaus­er, re­turn­ing to the Wart­burg, need­ed a wrin­kled Venus to show him that he was no longer at home, and that even pen­itence was a sort of im­per­ti­nence. He slipped away to Paris, and set up a house­hold at St. Ger­main where he taught and learned French his­to­ry for nieces who swarmed un­der the ven­er­able cedars of the Pavil­lon d’An­gouleme, and rode about the green for­est-​al­leys of St. Ger­main and Marly. From time to time Hay wrote hu­mor­ous laments, but noth­ing oc­curred to break the sum­mer-​peace of the strand­ed Tannhaus­er, who slow­ly be­gan to feel at home in France as in oth­er coun­tries he had thought more home­like. At length, like oth­er dead Amer­icans, he went to Paris be­cause he could go nowhere else, and lin­gered there till the Hays came by, in Jan­uary, 1898; and Mrs. Hay, who had been a stanch and strong al­ly for twen­ty years, bade him go with them to Egypt.

Adams cared lit­tle to see Egypt again, but he was glad to see Hay, and read­ily drift­ed af­ter him to the Nile. What they saw and what they said had as lit­tle to do with ed­uca­tion as pos­si­ble, un­til one evening, as they were look­ing at the sun set across the Nile from As­souan, Spencer Ed­dy brought them a tele­gram to an­nounce the sink­ing of the Maine in Ha­vana Har­bor. This was the great­est stride in ed­uca­tion since 1865, but what did it teach? One leant on a frag­ment of col­umn in the great hall at Kar­nak and watched a jack­al creep down the de­bris of ru­in. The jack­al’s an­ces­tors had sure­ly crept up the same wall when it was build­ing. What was his view about the val­ue of si­lence? One lay in the sands and watched the ex­pres­sion of the Sphinx. Brooks Adams had taught him that the re­la­tion be­tween civ­iliza­tions was that of trade. Hen­ry wan­dered, or was storm-​driv­en, down the coast. He tried to trace out the an­cient har­bor of Eph­esus. He went over to Athens, picked up Rock­hill, and searched for the har­bor of Tiryns; to­geth­er they went on to Con­stantino­ple and stud­ied the great walls of Con­stan­tine and the greater domes of Jus­tini­an. His hob­by had turned in­to a camel, and he hoped, if he rode long enough in si­lence, that at last he might come on a city of thought along the great high­ways of ex­change.