Part 18 (1/2)
Exceptions are plenty on both sides, as the Senate knew to its acute suffering; but young or old, woular unanimity; each praised silence in others Of all characteristics in hu
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 hest wisdoreed only on the merits of silence in others Socrates made remarks in its favor, which should have struck the Athenians as new to therown tiresome Thomas Carlyle vociferated his adht it the best forht Matthew Arnold the best forernon Swinburne called it thewolf 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, whoenius 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 ”te flame”; of which no one knew more than himself The evidence of the poets could not be rave 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 e; but that a very feere believed to have attained ignorance, which was in result the same More than this, in every society worth the naed to ride this hobby--the Pursuit of Ignorance in Silence--as though it were the easiest way to get rid of hinorance; but perhaps elsewhere the world ht still hide soned--although long search had not revealed it--and so the pilgrian 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 Adah thirty-six years were so ned and one saw little change in St James's Street
True, Carlton House Terrace, like the streets of Rohosts, 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 elco winter since 1893 One's fortunes, or one's friends' fortunes, were again in flood
This aed, for one found one's self the oldest Englishotten, and old traditions better unknown No wrinkled Tannhauser, returning to the Wartburg, needed a wrinkled Venus to show hier at home, and that even penitence was a sort of impertinence He slipped away to Paris, and set up a household at St Gerht and learned French history for nieces aroulereen forest-alleys of St Germain and Marly Fro occurred to break the suan to feel at hoht th, like other dead Ao 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 hiypt 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 frora of the Maine in Havana Harbor This was the greatest stride in education since 1865, but what did it teach? One leant on a fragreat hall at Karnak and watched a jackal creep down the debris of ruin The jackal's ancestors had surely crept up the sa What was his view about the value of silence? One lay in the sands and watched the expression of the Sphinx
Brooks Adaht 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 cah in silence, that at last he hways of exchange
CHAPTER XXIV
INDIAN SUMMER (1898-1899)
The suan the Indian sue, and cared only to reap in peace such harvest as these sixty years had yielded He had reason to be more than content with it Since 1864 he had felt no such sense of power and momentu it The sense of solidarity counts for aularly interesting to the last survivor of the Legation of 1861 He thought hiet full enjoyment of the drama He carried every scene of it, in a century and a half since the Stamp Act, quite alive in his mind--all the interminable disputes of his disputatious ancestors as far back as the year 1750--as well as his own insignificance in the Civil War, every step in which had the object of bringing England into an Au their teentle and patient Puritan nature of their descendants, until even their private secretaries at tie al fell on Hay After two hundred years of stupid and greedy blundering, which no arguland learned their lesson just at the moment when Hay would otherwise have faced a flood of the old anxieties Hay hirateful he should be, for to hie caes that had led to it, and to hi in the atmosphere of Palmerston and John Russell, the sudden appearance of Gerrizzly terror which, in twenty years effected what Adaland into America's arms--seemed as melodramatic as any plot of Napoleon the Great He could feel only the sense of satisfaction at seeing the diplomatic triumph of all his family, since the breed existed, at last realized under his own eyes for the advantage of his oldest and closest ally
This was history, not education, yet it taught soly serious, if not ultimate, could one trust the lesson For the first ti itself out in history Probably no one else on this earthly planet--not even Hay--could have come out on precisely such extreme personal satisfaction, but as he sat at Hay's table, listening to any member of the British Cabinet, for all were alike now, discuss the Philippines as a question of balance of power in the East, he could see that the farand perspective of true e, which Hay's work set off with artistic skill The roughness of the archaic foundations looked stronger and larger in scale for the refine list of faiven the work quite the completeness, the harmony, the perfect ease of Hay
Never before had Ada of law in history, which was the reason of his failure in teaching it, for chaos cannot be taught; but he thought he had a personal property by inheritance in this proof of sequence and intelligence in the affairs of ht to dispute; and this personal triumph left him a little cold towards the other diplomatic results of the war He knew that Porto Rico lad to escape the Philippines Apart from too intimate an acquaintance with the value of islands in the South Seas, he knew the West Indies well enough to be assured that, whatever the Aht think or say about it, they would sooner or later have to police those islands, not against Europe, but for Europe, and America too Education on the outskirts of civilized life teaches not very ht this; and one felt no call to shoulder the load of archipelagoes in the antipodes when one was trying painfully to pluck up courage to face the labor of shouldering archipelagoes at home The country decided otherwise, and one acquiesced readily enough since the ness to carry loads; in London, the balance of power in the East came alone into discussion; and in every point of view one had as h one had shared in the danger, instead of being vigorously ereat distance After all, friends had done the work, if not one's self, and he too serves a certain purpose who only stands and cheers
In June, at the crisis of interest, the Camerons ca in Kent which they made a sort of country house to the E those of Shropshi+re, and, even co the Welsh border, few are nobler or enial than Surrenden with its unbroken descent from the Saxons, its avenues, its terraces, its deer-park, its large repose on the Kentish hillside, and its broad outlook over as once the forest of Anderida Filled with a constant streauests, the house seemed to wait for the chance to show its charms to the A; and never since the battle of Hastings could the little telegraph office of the Kentish village have done such work There, on a hot July 4, 1898, to an expectant group under the shady trees, ca the destruction of the Spanish Arht have come to Queen Elizabeth in 1588; and there, later in the season, ca Hay to the State Department
Hay had no wish to be Secretary of State He much preferred to remain Ambassador, and his friends were quite as cold about it as he
No one knehat sort of strain falls on Secretaries of State, or how little strength he had in reserve against it Even at Surrenden he showed none too ladly have found a valid excuse for refusing The discussion on both sides was earnest, but the decided voice of the conclave was that, though if he were a ht certainly decline promotion, if he were a member of the Government he could not No serious statesman could accept a favor and refuse a service Doubtless he n The a Presidents has keen fascination for idle American hands, but these black arts have the old drawback of all deviltry; one h the service were perdition to body and soul For hi soave this unselfish decision, all would prove loss For one, Adams on that subject had become a little daft No one in his experience had ever passed unscathed through that malarious marsh In his fancy, office was poison; it killed--body and soul--physically and socially Office was y in proportion as it held more power; but the poison he complained of was not ambition; he shared none of Cardinal Wolsey's belated penitence for that healthy stimulant, as he had shared none of the fruits; his poison was that of the will--the distortion of sight--the warping ofof taste--the narrowing of syed rat Hay needed no office in order to wield influence For hi for hih poithout office; no one of his position, wealth, and political experience, living at the centre of politics in contact with the active party ers, could escape influence His only ambition was to escape annoyance, and no one knew better than he that, at sixty years of age, sensitive to physical strain, still more sensitive to brutality, vindictiveness, or betrayal, he took office at cost of life
Neither he nor any of the Surrenden circle nity for, with all his gaiety of htness of wit, he took dark views of hihter for their huloomiest acquiescence he had ever smiled Adams took dark views, too, not so much on Hay's account as on his own, for, while Hay had at least the honors of office, his friends would share only the ennuis of it; but, as usual with Hay, nothing was gained by taking such matters solemnly, and old habits of the Civil War left their h it He shouldered his pack and started for hole, though he had never known such sort of struggle to avail The chance was desperate, but he could not afford to throw it away; so, as soon as the Surrenden establishment broke up, on October 17, he prepared for return hoazing into La Fayette Square
He had made another false start and lost two years more of education; nor had he excuse; for, this time, neither politics nor society drew hi to do with Hay's politics at horeement with his views or his reed They all united in trying to help each other to get along the best way they could, and all they tried to save was the personal relation Even there, Adams would have been beaten had he not been helped by Mrs Hay, who saw the necessity of distraction, and led her husband into the habit of stopping every afternoon to take his friend off for an hour's walk, followed by a cup of tea with Mrs Hay afterwards, and a chat with any one who called
For the moment, therefore, the situation was saved, at least in outward appearance, and Ada a direction Perhaps they had no right to be called pursuits, for in truth one consciously pursued nothing, but drifted as attraction offered itself The short session broke up the Washi+ngton circle, so that, on March 22, Adaes for Europe and to pass April in Sicily and Roan afresh Forty years had left little of the Palermo that Garibaldi had shown to the boy of 1860, but Sicily in all ages see riot on that thean its study on the eye of Cyclops For a lesson in anarchy, without a shade of sequence, Sicily stands alone and defies evolution Syracuse teaches more than Rome Yet even Rome was not mute, and the church of Ara Coeli seeht to a centre, for every new journey led back to its steps--Karnak, Ephesus, Delphi, Mycencae, Constantinople, Syracuse--all lying on the road to the Capitol What they had to bring by way of intellectual riches could not yet be discerned, but they carried camel-loads of moral; and New York sent most of all, for, in forty years, America had made so vast a stride to empire that the world of 1860 stood already on a distant horizon somewhere on the same plane with the republic of Brutus and Cato, while schoolboys read of Abraham Lincoln as they did of Julius Caesar Vast swarms of Americans knew the Civil War only by school history, as they knew the story of Cromwell or Cicero, and were as fah they had lived under Nero The cli, year after year, as though Sulla were a President or McKinley a Consul