Part 16 (1/2)

ONCE more! this is a story of education, not of adventure! It is h to seek help--but it is not meant to amuse theetting it, need trouble the inquirer in no way; it is a personal matter only which would confuse hi; es incline to think that barely oneto any purpose on the forces that surround hily The object of education for that or and econo so far behind the active mind as to make a soft cushi+on of inertia to drop upon, as it did for Henry Adams; but education should try to lessen the obstacles, diy, and should train minds to react, not at haphazard, but by choice, on the lines of force that attract their world What one knows is, in youth, of little hout hu, and, as this story is meant to show, society has conspired to promote it No doubt the teacher is the worst cris the student from his course

The hly fitted, and the most favored have overcome the friction or the viscosity of inertia, and these were co it

Fit or unfit, Henry Adaan to apply it for practical uses, like his neighbors At the end of twenty years, he found that he had finished, and could suainst man or woman They had all treated him kindly; he had never met with ill-will, ill-temper, or even ill-manners, or known a quarrel He had never seen serious dishonesty or ingratitude He had found a readiness in the young to respond to suggestion that see the stock coainst the world, he could not understand why he had nothing to co these twenty years he had done as hbors wanted; more than they would ever stop to look at, and ether ridiculous the number of volumes he counted on the shelves of public libraries He had no notion whether they served a useful purpose; he had worked in the dark; but so had most of his friends, even the artists, none of who the standards of society, or felt profound respect for the methods or manners of their time, at home or abroad, but all of whom had tried, in a way, to hold the standard up The effort had been, for the older generation, exhausting, as one could see in the Hunts; but the generation after 1870 ure, not in proportion to public wealth or in the census, but in their own self-assertion A fair number of the men ere born in the thirties had won names--Phillips Brooks; Bret Harte; Henry Jaht beif it orth while; but froustus St Gaudens, McKim, Stanford White, and scores born in the forties, who counted as force even in theall these Clarence King, John Hay, and Henry Adaaps of a class which, as yet, showed but thin ranks and little cohesion The co prizes, but they pursued it for twenty years with as h it led to faht his own duties sufficiently performed and his account with society settled He had enjoyed his life aed it for any other that caht he was, perfectly satisfied with it; but for reasons that had nothing to do with education, he was tired; his nervous energy ran low; and, like a horse that wears out, he quitted the race-course, left the stable, and sought pastures as far as possible from the old

Education had ended in 1871; life was complete in 1890; the rest mattered so little!

As had happened so often, he found himself in London when the question of return imposed its verdict on him after much fruitless effort to rest elsewhere The time was the loom of midwinter He was close on his fifty-fourth birthday, and Pall Mall had forgotten hiotten his elders He had not seen London for a dozen years, and was rather a for horizon The coal-fire s was better than being turned out into the wastes of Wig over his youth, and driving once ine far less a than it had turned out to be

The future attracted hi there for a week he reflected on what he could do next He had just coe, who had reluctantly crawled away towards New York to resue when life runs low Adaone back to the east, if it were only to sleep forever in the trade-winds under the southern stars, wandering over the dark purple ocean, with its purple sense of solitude and void Not that he liked the sensation, but that it was the most unearthly he had felt He had not yet happened on Rudyard Kipling's ”Mandalay,” but he knew the poetry before he knew the poem, like millions of wanderers, who have perhaps alone felt the world exactly as it is Nothing attracted hi a new education The old one had been poor enough; any new one could only add to its faults Life had been cut in halves, and the old half had passed away, education and all, leaving no stock to graft on

The neorld he faced in Paris and London see to ad some kind of existence outside his own mind, he could not admit it reasonable In Paris, his heart sank to mere pulp before the dismal ballets at the Grand Opera and the eternal vaudeville at the old Palais Royal; but, except for them, his own Paris of the Second Ealleries and exhibitions, he was racked by the effort of art to be original, and when one day, after ht not still be roo simple in art, Adaer simple and could not express itself si that neither Adae understood

Under the first blast of this furnace-heat, the lights see in common with the world as it promised to be He was ready to quit it, and the easiest path led back to the east; but he could not venture alone, and the rarest of aniet one Perhaps, while waiting, he ht write ave orders for copying everything he could reach in archives, but this was oes back to his stable, because he knehere else to go

Hoton As soon as Grant's administration ended, in 1877, and Evarts became Secretary of State, Adams went back there, partly to write history, but chiefly because his seven years of laborious banishment, in Boston, convinced him that, as far as he had a function in life, it was as stable-companion to statesmen, whether they liked it or not At about the sa, and presently John Hay came on to be assistant Secretary of State for Mr Evarts, and stayed there to write the ”Life” of Lincoln

In 1884 Ada houses on La Fayette Square As far as Adams had a home this was it To the house on La Fayette Square he must turn, for he had no other status--no position in the world

Never did heback to his er His father and mother were dead All his family led settled lives of their own Except for two or three friends in Washi+ngton, ere themselves uncertain of stay, no one cared whether he ca to care about Every one was busy; nearly every one see had ruffled the surface of the Aress of Europe in her side-way track to dis-Europeaning herself had ceased to be violent After a dreary January in Paris, at last when no excuse could be persuaded to offer itself for further delay, he crossed the channel and passed a ith his old friend, Milnes Gaskell, at Thornes, in Yorkshi+re, while the westerly gales raved a warning against going home Yorkshi+re in January is not an island in the South Seas It has few points of resemblance to Tahiti; not many to Fiji or Samoa; but, as so often before, it was a rest between past and future, and Adarateful for it

At last, on February 3, he drove, after a fashi+on, down the Irish Channel, on board the Teutonic He had not crossed the Atlantic for a dozen years, and had never seen an ocean stea new of any sort, or land The railways made quicker time, but were no more comfortable

The scale was the same The Channel service was hardly improved since 1858, or so little as to make no impression Europe seemed to have been stationary for twenty years To a man who had been stationary like Europe, the Teutonic was a h a week of howling winter gales was a miracle That he should have a deck staterooht, if he chose, by electric light, was matter for more wonder than life had yet supplied, in its old forms Wonder ures As the Niagara was to the Teutonic--as 1860 was to 1890--so the Teutonic and 1890 must be to the next term--and then? Apparently the question concerned only America Western Europe offered no such conundruht double scale and speed indefinitely without passing bounds

Fate was kind on that voyage Rudyard Kipling, on his wedding trip to America, thanks to the er his exuberant fountain of gaiety and wit--as though playing a garden hose on a thirsty and faded begonia Kipling could never knohat peace of ave, for he could hardly ever need it hiht of his endless fun and variety; one felt the old conundru and the Aether The American felt that the defect, if defect it were, was in hiain, with Robert Louis Stevenson, even under the palms of Vailima; but he did not carry self-abaseular

Whatever the defect ed to the type; it lived in the blood Whatever the quality lish; it lived also in the blood; one felt it little if at all, with Celts, and one yearned reciprocally a used to say that it was due to discord between the wave-lengths of the man-atoms; but the theory offered difficulties in enius soars; but this theory, too, had its dark corners All through life, one had seen the Ah many lives back for some two centuries, one had seen the European snub or patronize the American; not always intentionally, but effectually

It was in the nature of things Kipling neither snubbed nor patronized; he was all gaiety and good-nature; but he would have been first to feel what oneself-respect

Towards the ain in Washi+ngton In Paris and London he had seen nothing to ton he saw plenty of reasons for staying dead Changes had taken place there; iht beco to some fashi+onable standard; but all one's friends had died or disappeared several tie as in Boston or London Slowly, a certain society had built itself up about the Govern;of cards; but a solitary man counted for less than in 1868 Society seeress held it aloof No one in society seemed to have the ear of anybody in Govern any one in society The world had ceased to be wholly political, but politics had becoe Bancroft, or John Hay--tried to keep footing, but without brilliant success They were free to say or do what they liked; but no one tooksaid or done

A presidential election was to take place in November, and no one showed ular persons, of who that one of them had no friends; the other, only eneether the wittiest and cleverestMr Cleveland in glowing terth, as one of the loftiest natures and noblest characters of ancient or modern time; ”but,” he concluded, ”in future I prefer to look on at his proceedings fro hill” The same rereatest of Presidents, for, whatever har when compared to the mortality they inflicted on their friends

Men fled theh they had the evil eye To the American people, the two candidates and the two parties were so evenly balanced that the scales showed hardly a perceptible difference Mr Harrison was an excellent President, a man of ability and force; perhaps the best President the Republican Party had put forward since Lincoln's death; yet, on the whole, Adams felt a shade of preference for President Cleveland, not so much personally as because the Dehteenth century; the survivors of Hosea Biglow's Cornwallis; the sole reainst a banker's Olympus which had become, for five-and-twenty years, ht no longer croak except to vote for King Log, or--failing storks--for Grover Cleveland; and even then could not be sure where King Banker lurked behind The costly education in politics had led to political torpor Every one did not share it Clarence King and John Hay were loyal Republicans who never for a moment conceived that there could bewas chiefly love of archaic races; sy dislike of their ene, a little like the loyalty of a highly cultivated churchs of the party, and still more keenly those of the partisans; but he could not live outside To Adams a Western Democrat or a Western Republican, a city Democrat or a city Republican, a W C Whitney or a J G Blaine, were actually the sa, Hay, or Adaraded themselves as friends or enemies not as Republicans or De respectable or not

Since 1879, King, Hay, and Adaone on in the closest sy public position, until, in 1892, none of thereat effort, in Hayes's ad Abra the Surveys and had placed King at the head of the Bureau; but King waited only to organize the service, and then resigned, in order to seek his private fortune in the West Hay, after serving as assistant Secretary of State under Secretary Evarts during a part of Hayes's ad out, in order to write with Nicolay the ”Life” of Lincoln Adams had held no office, and when his friends asked the reason, he could not go into long explanations, but preferred to answer simply that no President had ever invited hiood, and was also conveniently true, but left open an aard doubt of his morals or capacity Why had no President ever cared to employ him? The question needed a volume of intricate explanation There never was a day when he would have refused to perform any duty that the Government imposed on hie iard to him, or to any one else The Government required candidates to offer; the business of the Executive began and ended with the consent or refusal to confer The social formula carried this passive attitude a shade further Any public man who may for years have used some other man's house as his ohen proed to inquire, directly or indirectly, whether his friend wants anything; which is equivalent to a civil act of divorce, since he feels aard in the old relation The handsorandly courteous Southern phrase of La in my power is at his service” A la disposicion de Usted! The form must have been correct since it released both parties

He was right; Mr Adams did know all about it; a bow and a conventional smile closed the subject forever, and every one felt flattered

Such an intimate, promoted to poas always lost His duties and cares absorbed him and affected his balance of mind Unless his friend served some political purpose, friendshi+p was an effort Men who neither wrote for newspapers nor n fund, and who entered the White House as seldom as possible, placed themselves outside the sphere of usefulness, and did so with entirely adequate knowledge of what they were doing

They never expected the President to ask for their services, and saw no reason why he should do so As for Henry Adaton, no one would have been more surprised than himself had any President ever asked him to perforressined that the President needed their services in so hiton this law or custom is universally understood, and no one's character necessarily suffered because he held no office No one took office unless he wanted it; and in turn the outsider was never asked to do work or subscribe ravely thought that, fro run, he was likely to be a more useful citizen without office He could at least act as audience, and, in those days, a Washi+ngton audience seldom filled even a small theatre He felt quite well satisfied to look on, and froht risk a criticisular, he never quite understood that of John Hay The Republican leaders treated Hay as one of themselves; they asked his services and took his ered even a hardened observer; but they never needed hiton Hay was the only competent man in the party for diplomatic work He corresponded in his powers of usefulness exactly with Lord Granville in London, who had been for forty years the saving grace of every Liberal administration in turn Had usefulness to the public service been ever a question, Hay should have had a first-class mission under Hayes; should have been placed in the Cabinet by Garfield, and should have been restored to it by Harrison These gentle him; always invited his services, and always took his money

Adams's opinion of politics and politicians, as he frankly adh never, in his severest temper, did he apply to them the terms they freely applied to each other; and he explained everything by his old explanation of Grant's character as eneral type; but what roused in his ood-nature hich Hay allowed himself to be used The trait was not confined to politics Hay seemed to like to be used, and this was one of his ood-nature de lapses of social convention the politicians betrayed, Hay laughed equally heartily, and told the stories with constant amusement, at his own expense LikePresidents, but, unlike hed not only at the Presidents he helped to

One ratify an expensive taste like this Other , and did it well, less for selfish objects than for the aton and in the centre of the Ohio influences that ruled the Republican Party during thirty years On the whole, these influences were respectable, and although Adams could not, under any circumstances, have had any value, even financially, for Ohio politicians, Hay h to appreciate hi object; Hay laughed, and, for want of other resource, Ada how President Harrison dealt his cards that made Adams welcome President Cleveland back to the White House

At all events, neither Hay nor King nor Ada Mr Harrison in 1892, or by defeating him, as far as he was concerned; and as far as concerned Mr Cleveland, they seemed to have even less personal concern The whole country, to outward appearance, stood in much the same frame of mind Everywhere was slack-water Hay hiuid and indifferent as Adams Neither had occupation Both had finished their literary work

The ”Life” of Lincoln had been begun, completed, and published hand in hand with the ”History” of Jefferson and Madison, so that between them they had written nearly all the American history there was to write