Part 16 (2/2)

The interap between James Madison and Abraham Lincoln could not be judicially filled by either of them Both were heartily tired of the subject, and A energy of Aenerally served as the resource of minds otherwise vacant, the creation of new force, the application of expanding power, showed signs of check Even the year before, in 1891, far off in the Pacific, one hadparalysis--cohout the whole southern hee and silver-production looovernton The matter did not concern Adams, who had no credit, and was always richest when the rich were poor; but it helped to dull the vibration of society

However they studied it, the balance of profit and loss, on the last twenty years, for the three friends, King, Hay, and Adaly obscure in 1892 They had lost twenty years, but what had they gained? They often discussed the question Hay had a singular faculty for re faces, and would break off suddenly the thread of his talk, as he looked out of theon La Fayette Square, to notice an old corps co to the club for his cards or his cocktail: ”There is old Dash who broke the rebel lines at Blankburg! Think of his having been a thunderbolt of war!” Or what drew Ada like the ga kid!” There they went! Men who had swayed the course of e, and Adaresseneral was a Boutwell or Boutwell a general Theirs was the highest known success, and one asked what it orth to them Apart from personal vanity, ould they sell it for? Would any one of them, from President doards, refuse ten thousand a year in place of all the consideration he received from the world on account of his success?

Yet consideration had value, and at that tiustus St Gaudens, in hours of depression, on its economics: ”Honestly you et a certain a the best work Very likely so you should come to dinner sometimes, if you did not come too often, while they would think twice about Hay, and would never stand eneral and admiral not much; the historian but little; on the whole, the artist stood best, and of course, wealth rested outside the question, since it was acting as judge; but, in the last resort, the judge certainly adh hardly as much as ten--or five--thousand a year

Hay and Ada out of their s on the antiquities of La Fayette Square, with the sense of having all that any one had; all that the world had to offer; all that they wanted in life, including their naraphical dictionaries; but this had nothing to do with consideration, and they knew no more than Boutwell or St Gaudens whether to call it success Hay had passed ten years in writing the ”Life” of Lincoln, and perhaps President Lincoln was the better for it, but what Hay got fro popular book- the author Adaiven ten or a dozen years to Jefferson and Madison, with expenses which, in any mercantile business, could hardly have been reckoned at less than a hundred thousand dollars, on a salary of five thousand a year; and when he asked what return he got froant in proportion to his -stable, he could see none whatever Such works never return money Even Frank Parkman never printed a first edition of his relatively cheap and popular volu more than seven hundred copies, until quite at the end of his life A thousand copies of a book that cost twenty dollars or more was as much as any author could expect; two thousand copies was a visionary estimate unless it were canvassed for subscription As far as Adams knew, he had but three serious readers--Abrah, and Hay himself He was amply satisfied with their consideration, and could dispense with that of the other fifty-nine million, nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety-seven; but neither he nor Hay was better off in any other respect, and their chief title to consideration was their right to look out of their s on great e which had nothing to do with their writings

The world was always good-natured; civil; glad to be amused; open-armed to any one who a hi it money; but this was not consideration, still less power in any of its concrete forms, and applied as well or better to a comic actor Certainly a rare soprano or tenor voice earned infinitely ave infinitely more pleasure, even in America; but one does what one can with one'sup one's balance sheet, one expects only a reasonable return on one's capital Hay and Ada had followed the ambitious course He had played for reat success, but the result was still in doubt, and round For companionshi+p he was , nor Adams knehether they had attained success, or how to estimate it, or what to call it; and the American people seemed to have no clearer idea than they Indeed, the A in a wilderness much more sandy than the Hebrews had ever trodden about Sinai; they had neither serpents nor golden calves to worshi+p They had lost the sense of worshi+p; for the idea that they worshi+pped money seemed a delusion Worshi+p of money was an old-world trait; a healthy appetite akin to worshi+p of the Gods, or to worshi+p of power in any concrete shape; but the American wasted money more recklessly than any one ever did before; he spent ant court aristocracy; he had no sense of relative values, and knew not what to do with his ot it, except use it to an, it had seen no such curious spectacle as the houses of the San Francisco millionaires on nob Hill Except for the railway systeround since 1840, had disappeared West of the Alleghenies, the whole country ht have been swept clean, and could have been replaced in better form within one or two years The American mind had less respect for money than the European or Asiatic mind, and bore its loss more easily; but it had been deflected by its pursuit till it could turn in no other direction It shunned, distrusted, disliked, the dangerous attraction of ideals, and stood alone in history for its ignorance of the past

Personal contact brought this American trait close to Adaton, took him out to the ceure which St

Gaudens had made for him in his absence Naturally every detail interested hiht and shade; every point of relation; every possible doubt of St

Gaudens's correctness of taste or feeling; so that, as the spring approached, he was apt to stop there often to see what the figure had to tell him that was new; but, in all that it had to say, he never once thought of questioning what itto be the one coht He knew that if he asked an Asiatic its , not a man, woman, or child frolance to reply Froyptian Sphinx to the Kaelo to Shelley, art had wrought on this eternal figure al else to say The interest of the figure was not in its , but in the response of the observer As Adaure seemed to have beco Most took it for a portrait-statue, and the reuide None felt ould have been a nursery-instinct to a Hindu baby or a japanese jinricksha-runner The only exceptions were the clergy, who taught a lesson even deeper One after another brought companions there, and, apparently fascinated by their own reflection, broke out passionately against the expression they felt in the figure of despair, of atheism, of denial Like the others, the priest saw only what he brought Like all great artists, St Gaudens held up the ht of ideals; the Aht of faith Both were more American than the old, half-witted soldiers who denounced the wasting, on a iven for drink

Landed, lost, and forgotten, in the centre of this vast plain of self-content, Adams could see but one active interest, to which all others were subservient, and which absorbed the energies of some sixty million people to the exclusion of every other force, real or iinary The power of the railway system had enormously increased since 1870 Already the coal output of 160,000,000 tons closely approached the 180,000,000 of the British Empire, and one held one's breath at the nearness of what one had never expected to see, the crossing of courses, and the lead of A to a historian, but the railway system itself interested one less than in 1868, since it offered less chance for future profit Adarown up with it; had been over pretty nearly every mile of it with curious eyes, and knew as hbors; but not there could he look for a new education Incoh it was, the system seemed on the whole to satisfy the wants of society better than any other part of the social machine, and society was content with its creation, for the ti neas to be done or learned there, and the world hurried on to its telephones, bicycles, and electric trams At past fifty, Adams sole else occurred to hi else offered itself, however carefully he sought He looked for no change He lingered in Washi+ngton till near July without noticing a new idea Then he went back to England to pass his summer on the Deeside

In October he returned to Washi+ngton and there awaited the reelection of Mr Cleveland, which led to no deeper thought than that of taking up so He had seen enough of the world to be a coward, and above all he had an uneasy distrust of bankers Even dead men allow themselves a few narrow prejudices

CHAPTER XXII

CHICAGO (1893)

DRIFTING in the dead-water of the fin-de-siecle--and during this last decade every one talked, and seemed to feel fin-de-siecle--where not a breath stirred the idle air of education or fretted theceased going into society For years he had not dined out of his own house, and in public his face was as unknown as that of an extinct statesman He had often noticed that six months' oblivion amounts to newspaper-death, and that resurrection is rare Nothing is easier, if a rave

His friends sometiht on their passage south or northwards, but existence was, on the whole, exceedingly solitary, or seemed so to him

Of the society favorites who ress--Tom Reed, Bourke cockran, Edward Wolcott--he knew not one Although Calvin Brice was his next neighbor for six years, entertaining lavishly as no one had ever entertained before in Washi+ngton, Adams never entered his house W C Whitney rivalled Senator Brice in hospitality, and was besides an old acquaintance of the refor era, but Adams saw him as little as he saw his chief, President Cleveland, or President Harrison or Secretary Bayard or Blaine or Olney One has no choice but to go everywhere or nowhere No one may pick and choose between houses, or accept hospitality without returning it He loved solitude as little as others did; but he was unfit for social work, and he sank under the surface

Luckily for such helpless aniood-natured but even friendly and generous; it loves to pardon if pardon is not deht Adams's social offences were many, and no one was more sensitive to it than himself; but a few houses always re asked, and quit without being noticed One was John Hay's; another was Cabot Lodge's; a third led to an inti hie of the very class of American politician who had done most to block his intended path in life Senator Ca niece of Senator John Sher an alliance of dynastic in of sixteen years, during which Mrs Cae led a career, without precedent and without succession, as the dispensers of sunshi+ne over Washi+ngton Both of them had been kind to Adams, and a dozen years of this intimacy had made him one of their habitual household, as he was of Hay's In a small society, such ties between houses become political and social force Without intention or consciousness, they fix one's status in the world Whatever one's preferences in politics ht be, one's house was bound to the Republican interest when sandwiched between Senator Cae, with Theodore Roosevelt equally at ho-Rice to unite them by impartial variety The relation was daily, and the alliance undisturbed by power or patronage, since Mr Harrison, in those respects, showed little more taste than Mr

Cleveland for the society and interests of this particular band of followers, whose relations with the White House were sometimes comic, but never intimate

In February, 1893, Senator Caht an old plantation at Coffin's Point on St Helena Island, and Adams, as one of the family, was taken, with the rest, to open the new experience From there he went on to Havana, and caer till near April In May the Senator took his fao to see the Exposition, and Adaether, and at last, in the ins, Chamounix, and Zermatt On July 22 they drove across the Furka Pass and went down by rail to Lucerne

Months of close contact teach character, if character has interest; and to Adams the Cameron type had keen interest, ever since it had shi+pwrecked his career in the person of President Grant Perhaps it owed life to Scotch blood; perhaps to the blood of Adam and Eve, the prier working against the blood of the townsman; but whatever it was, one liked it for its sio, was not complex; it reasoned little and never talked; but in practical matters it was the steadiest of all American types; perhaps the most efficient; certainly the safest

Adams had printed as much as this in his books, but had never been able to find a type to describe, the two great historical Pennsylvanians having been, as every one had so often heard, Benjamin Franklin of Boston and Albert Gallatin of Geneva Of Albert Gallatin, indeed, he had made a voluminous study and an elaborate picture, only to show that he was, if American at all, a New Yorker, with a Calvinistic strain--rather Connecticut than Pennsylvanian The true Pennsylvanian was a narrower type; as narrow as the kirk; as shy of other people's narrowness as a Yankee; as self-limited as a Puritan farro, Dago, Italian, Englishman, Yankee--all was one in the depths of Pennsylvanian consciousness The mental machine could run only on what it took for American lines This was familiar, ever since one's study of President Grant in 1869; but in 1893, as then, the type was ad and useful if one wanted only to run on the saot his prejudices when he allied his interests He then becaht of his colleagues When he happened to be right--which was, of course, whenever one agreed with hiest American in America As an ally he orth all the rest, because he understood his own class, ere always a lander could If one wanted work done in Congress, one did wisely to avoid asking a New Englander to do it A Pennsylvanian not only could do it, but did it willingly, practically, and intelligently

Never in the range of human possibilities had a Cameron believed in an Adah, alether The Caht the political vice of reaching their objects without ard to their methods The loftiest virtue of the Pennsylvaniaprofessions

The machine worked by coarse means on coarse interests, but its practical success had been the most curious subject of study in American history When one summed up the results of Pennsylvanian influence, one inclined to think that Pennsylvania set up the Government in 1789; saved it in 1861; created the American systereat railways

Following up the same line, in his studies of Aether paradoxical--that Cameron's qualities and defects united in equal share to make him the most useful , at last, a perfect and favorable specimen of this American type which had so persistently suppressed his own, Adaly influenced him, but he could not see a trace of any influence which he exercised on Cameron Not an opinion or a view of his on any subject was ever reflected back on him from Cameron's mind; not even an expression or a fact Yet the difference in age was trifling, and in education slight

On the other hand, Ca so reat subject of discussion that year--the question of silver

Ada about it, except as a very tedious hobby of his friend Dana Horton; but inevitably, from the moment he was forced to choose sides, he was sure to choose silver Every political idea and personal prejudice he ever dallied with held hiold He kneell enough all that was to be said for the gold standard as economy, but he had never in his life taken politics for a pursuit of econoht have a political or an economical policy; one could not have both at the salish school, but it had always been law in the American Equally he knew all that was to be said on the moral side of the question, and he admitted that his interests were, as Boston old; but, had they been ten tireat as they were, he could not have helped his bankers or croupiers to load the dice and pack the cards tothe stakes At least he was bound to profess disapproval--or thought he was Froled blindly with his interests, but he was certain of one law that ruled all others-- morals

Morality is a private and costly luxury The old standards was to be decided by popular vote, and the popular vote would be decided by interests; but on which side lay the larger interest? To hiht it probably his last chance of standing up for his eighteenth-century principles, strict construction, liton, John Adaled all his life against State Street, banks, capitalisland, and he was fated to make his last resistance behind the silver standard