Part 18 (2/2)

Nothing annoyed Americans more than to be told this simple and obvious--in no way unpleasant--truth; therefore one sat silent as ever on the Capitol; but, by way of coe to assisi and an intervieith St Francis, whose solution of historical riddles seemed the most satisfactory--or sufficient--ever offered; worth fully forty years' more study, and better worth it than Gibbon hiustine, St

A effect of all these fresh cross-lights on the old assistant Professor of 1874 was due to the astonishi+ng contrast bethat he had taught then and what he found hi to learn five-and-twenty years afterwards--between the twelfth century of his thirtieth and that of his sixtieth years At Harvard College, weary of spirit in the wastes of Anglo-Saxon law, he had occasionally given way to outbursts of derision at shedding his life-blood for the sublime truths of Sac and Soc:--

HIC JACET HOMUNCULUS SCRIPTOR DOCTOR BARBARICUS HENRICUS ADAMS ADAE FILIUS ET EVAE PRIMO EXPLICUIT SOCNAM

The Latin was as twelfth-century as the law, and he meant as satire the clai of Sac and Soc, although any German professor would have scorned it as a shameless and presumptuous bid for immortality; but the whole point of view had vanished in 1900 Not he, but Sir Henry Maine and Rudolph Sohm, were the parents or creators of Sac and Soc Convinced that the clue of religion led to nothing, and that politics led to chaos, one had turned to the law, as one's scholars turned to the Law School, because one could see no other path to a profession

The law had proved as futile as politics or religion, or any other single thread spun by the human spider; it offered no e, and no more force of its own

St Francis expressed supreme conte it altogether Adams returned to Paris with a broken and contrite spirit, prepared to ad, and conscious that in any case it no longersadly with the last at Surrenden; but the solitude did what the society did not--it forced and drove hinorance in silence Here at last he entered the practice of his final profession Hunted by ennui, he could no longer escape, and, by way of a suulation--of the twelfth century The pursuit had a singular French char lost--a calor of action, co sureen pleasure in the forests, and gray infinity of rest in the little twelfth-century churches that lined the as their own mosses, and as sure of their purpose as their round arches; but churches were many and summer was short, so that he was at last driven back to the quays and photographs For weeks he lived in silence

His solitude was broken in Novee At that e had a new value

Of all the men who had deeply affected their friends since 1850 John La Farge was certainly the foremost, and for Henry Adams, who had sat at his feet since 1872, the question howthat he had no standard to e alone owned a ainst the commonplaces of American uniformity, and in the process had vastly perplexed most Americans who came in contact with it The American mind--the Bostonian as well as the Southern or Western--likes to walk straight up to its object, and assert or deny so that it takes for a fact; it has a conventional approach, a conventional analysis, and a conventional conclusion, as well as a conventional expression, all the ti its unconventionality The e was his reversal of the process His approach was quiet and indirect; he moved round an object, and never separated it fros; he prided himself on faithfulness to tradition and convention; he was never abrupt and abhorred dispute His manners and attitude towards the universe were the sa in thethe trade-wind fro the cha-no-yu in the for his cocoanut cup of kava in the cere under the sacred bo-tree at Anaradjpura

One was never quite sure of his wholeuntil too late to respond, for he had no difficulty in carrying different shades of contradiction in his ht ran as a strearass, hidden perhaps but always there; and one felt often uncertain in what direction it flowed, for even a contradiction was to him only a shade of difference, a coent artist would dispute

Constantly he repulsed argu reproaches even in the ht of Tahiti dinners He should have bla born in Boston The , and Adae, eccentricity meant convention; a mind really eccentric never betrayed it True eccentricity was a tone--a shade--a nuance--and the finer the tone, the truer the eccentricity Of course all artists hold more or less the same point of view in their art, but few carry it into daily life, and often the contrast is excessive between their art and their talk One evening Hue, asked hie was ill--more ill than usual even for hi By chance, Adams was so placed as to overhear the conversation of both, and had no choice but to hear that of Whistler, which engrossed the table At that , and, as every one knows, on that subject Whistler raged worse than the Boers For two hours he declaiant, bitter, a, and noisy; but in substance what he said was not merely co Adareed with it all, and e was silent, and this difference of expression was a difference of art Whistler in his art carried the sense of nuance and tone far beyond any point reached by La Farge, or even attempted; but in talk he showed, above or below his color-instinct, a willingness to seem eccentric where no real eccentricity, unless perhaps of temper, existed

This vehee seelass With the relative value of La Farge's glass in the history of glass-decoration, Adanorant to norant than he; but whatever it was, it led hie not only felt at home, but felt a sort of ownershi+p No other Aht there, unless he too were a lass Adae to resign hih deplorably Bostonian; while Ada either of glass or of Chartres, asked no better than to learn, and only La Farge could help hie alone could use glass like a thirteenth-century artist In Europe the art had been dead for centuries, and lass rather as a document than as a historical ees and Paris, Adaainst a color-schee's ht, and with color toned down to the finest gradations In glass it was insubordinate; it was renaissance; it asserted his personal force with depth and vehemence of tone never before seen He seeloom of a Paris December at the Elysee Palace Hotel was somewhat relieved by this companionshi+p, and education e's health becaet him safely back to New York, January 15, 1900, while he hiton to find out what had becoood could be hoped, for Hay's troubles had begun, and were quite as great as he had foreseen Adah he dared not say so He doubted Hay's endurance, the President's fir him, and the loyalty of his party friends; but all this worry on Hay's account fretted him not nearly so much as the Boer War did on his own

Here was a problem in his political education that passed all experience since the Treason winter of 1860-61! Much to his astonishment, very few Americans seeland seemed mere tee He had been taught froland, that his forbears and their associates in 1776 had settled, once for all, the liberties of the British free colonies, and he very strongly objected to being thrown on the defensive again, and forced to sit down, a hundred and fifty years after John Adaun the task, to prove, by appeal to law and fact, that George Washi+ngton was not a felon, whatever e III

For reasons still more personal, he declined peremptorily to entertain question of the felony of John Adao even further, and avow the opinion that if at any tiland should take towards Canada the position she took towards her Boer colonies, the United States would be bound, by their record, to interpose, and to insist on the application of the principles of 1776 To hiues see to Hay

Trained early, in the stress of civil war, to hold his tongue, and to help make the political machine run somehow, since it could never be made to run well, he would not bother Hay with theoretical objections which were every day fretting hiood-temper till the luck should turn, and to him the only object was time; but as political education the point see his eyes or denying an evident fact Practical politics consists in ignoring facts, but education and politics are two different and often contradictory things In this case, the contradiction seemed crude

With Hay's politics, at hoed to the New York school, like Abram Hewitt, Evarts, W C Whitney, Saame for ambition or amusement, and played it, as a rule, much better than the professionals, but whose aier than those of the usual player, and who felt no great love for the cheap drudgery of the work In return, the professionals felt no great love for them, and set them aside when they could Only their control of money made them inevitable, and even this did not always carry their points The story of Abram Heould offer one type of this statesman series, and that of Hay another President Cleveland set aside the one; President Harrison set aside the other ”There is no politics in it,” was his comment on Hay's appointment to office Hay held a different opinion and turned to McKinley whose judgment of ht to the probleovernment a solution which lay very far outside of Henry Adams's education, but which seemed to be at least practical and Aeneral trust into which every interest should be taken, more or less at its own valuation, and whose ement, create efficiency He achieved very remarkable results

How much they cost was another matter; if the public is ever driven to its last resources and the usual remedies of chaos, the result will probably cost er of men, McKinley found several manipulators to help him, almost as remarkable as hith eakest and his task hardest At ho their price; but abroad whatever helped on one side, hurt hiht first into the combine; but at that tiland, and the Boer War helped them For the moment Hay had no ally, abroad or at home, except Pauncefote, and Adah

Yet the difficulty abroad was far less troublesorown eable, even since the time of Andrew Johnson, and this was less the fault of the Senate than of the systes,” said Hay, ”ought to be ratified with unani over this one, and ratified it with one vote to spare We have five or sixsettleeously to our own side; and I a otiated, will pass the Senate I should have a majority in every case, but a malcontent third would certainly dish every one of theinal rown in the evolution of our politics You must understand, it is not merely my solution the Senate will reject They will reject, for instance, any treaty, whatever, on any subject, with England I doubt if they would accept any treaty of consequence with Russia or Germany The recalcitrant third would be differently composed, but it would be on hand So that the real duties of a Secretary of State seeht claims upon us by other States; to press more or less fraudulent claims of our own citizens upon other countries; to find offices for the friends of Senators when there are none Is it worth while--for me--to keep up this useless labor?”

To Ada with the same enemies, the question had scarcely the interest of a new study He had said all he had to say about it in a dozen orto the politics of a hundred years before To hiue was too open to be interesting The interference of the Gerations, and of the Clan-na-Gael, with the press and the Senate was innocently undisguised The char Russian Minister, Count Cassini, the ideal of diplo, let few days pass without appealing through the press to the public against the government The Ger, and of course every whisper of theirs was brought instantly to the Departular opposition and the natural obstructionists, could always stop action in the Senate The fathers had intended to neutralize the energy of government and had succeeded, but their machine was never meant to do the work of a twenty-million horse-power society in the twentieth century, where much work needed to be quickly and efficiently done The only defence of the syste well, it had best do nothing; but the Governiven to do; and even if the charge were true, it applied equally to huether, if one chose to treat mankind from that point of view As a matter of mechanics, so much work must be done; bad enerous, easy, patient, and loyal, Hay had treated the world as soet rid of its defects; he liked it all: he laughed and accepted; he had never known unhappiness and would have gladly lived his entire life over again exactly as it happened In the whole New York school, one met a similar dash of humor and cynicisayest of tempers succumbs at last to constant friction The old friend was rapidly fading The habit reaiety, the casual hu into the routine of office; the ht failed to react; the wit and humor shrank within the blank walls of politics, and the irritations

Although, as education, this branch of study was more faing the two periods into a conorance required that these political and social and scientific values of the twelfth and twentieth centuries should be correlated in some relation of movement that could be expressed in mathematics, nor did one care in the least that all the world said it could not be done, or that one knew not enough ure a fort2/2

If Kepler and Newton could take liberties with the sun and moon, an obscure person in a remote wilderness like La Fayette Square could take liberties with Congress, and venture to multiply half its attraction into the square of its time He had only to find a value, even infinitesiiven time A historical formula that should satisfy the conditions of the stellar universe weighed heavily on hismatter like this was one in which he could look for no help from anybody--he could look only for derision at best

All his associates in history condemned such an attempt as futile and almost immoral--certainly hostile to sound historical system Adams tried it only because of its hostility to all that he had taught for history, since he started afresh froht rong He had pursued ignorance thus far with success, and had swept his -point of Sir Isaac Newton, he looked about hiton cared to overstep the school conventions, and the uished of them, Simon Newcomb, was too sound a reatest of Aed by his rank in science, Willard Gibbs, never caton, and Adams never enjoyed a chance to ley, of the Smithsonian, as more accessible, to who whenever he wanted an outlet for his vast reservoirs of ignorance Langley listened with outward patience to his disputatious questionings; but he too nourished a scientific passion for doubt, and sentimental attachment for its avowal He had the physicist's heinous fault of professing to know nothing between flashes of intense perception Like so ley was not a mathematician, and likehimself the aesting unintelligible answers to insoluble problems, he still knew the problems, and liked to wander past the to the their existence, while doubting their respectability He generously let others doubt what he felt obliged to affirm; and early put into Adae Stallo, which had been treated for a dozen years by the schools with a conspiracy of silence such as inevitably meets every revolutionary work that upsets the stock and machinery of instruction Adams read and failed to understand; then he asked questions and failed to get answers

Probably this was education Perhaps it was the only scientific education open to a student sixty-odd years old, who asked to be as ignorant as an astrono: he wanted to know its h, or was too much Kinetic atoress History had no use for multiplicity; it needed unity; it could study onlyether; one must seek neorlds to measure; and so, like Rasselas, Adams set out once more, and found himself on May 12 settled in rooms at the very door of the Trocadero

CHAPTER XXV

THE DYNAMO AND THE VIRGIN (1900)