Part 23 (2/2)

”I don't call that dry wine,” he crossly said, and took another sip ”My God,” without a pause he continued, ”isn't that great?”

Of course he was i cold exterior and admirable self-control--the discipline of the master artist--lay the moods and tenses of theoutside of music and did not care to learn I tried to interest hiestions to scorn and then swore like a trooper Gerh It ell that he passed away before the world war Pat Gilmore--”Patrick Sarsfield,” ays called him--was a born politician, and if he had not been a musician he would have been a statesman I kept the peace between hi all kinds of kind things each had said of the other,pure inventions of my own

Chapter the Fourteenth

Henry Adams and the Adams Family--John Hay and Frank Mason--The Three _Mousquetaires_ of Culture--Paris--”The Frenchman”--The South of France

I

I have been of late reading The Education of Henry Ada to the period about which I a I knew Henry Adahout his prolonged residence in Washi+ngton City He was an Adahostso, with an English ”cut to his jib”

No three brothers could be more unlike than Charles Francis, John Quincy and Henry Adaeneration of the brainiest pedigree--that is in continuous line--known to our faht he was a philosopher and tried to be one He thought he was a man of the world and wanted to be one He was, in spite of himself, a provincial

Provincialism is not necessarily rustic, even suburban There is no provincial quite so provincial as he who has passed his life in great cities The Parisian boulevardier taken away from the asphalt, the cockney a little off Clapham Common and the Strand, is lost Henry Adams knew his London and his Paris, his Boston and his Quincy--we rown up, between the lids of history, and for all his learning and travel he never got very far outside theht he was English--delightfully English--though he cultivated the cos the Executive Mansion across Lafayette Square--especially during the life of his wife, an adorable woman, who made up in sweetness and tact for so in her husband--was an intellectual and high-bred center, a rendezvous for the best ton and the most accepted people The Adamses may be said to have succeeded the Eameses as leaders in semi-social, semi-literary and semi-political society

There was a trio--I used to call thee and Henry Ada and inseparable trinity--Caleb Cushi+ng, Robert J Walker and Charles Sumner not more so--and it orth while to let thee, cool and wary as a politician should be; Hay, helterskelter, the real man of the world crossed on a Western stock; and Ada of a literatteur, a statesman and a cynic

John Randolph Tucker, hen he was in Congress often met Henry at dinners and the like, said to him on the appearance of the early volumes of his History of the United States: ”I am not disappointed, for how could an Adams be expected to do justice to a Randolph?”

While he riting this history Adams said to reatest villain of his time--a Kentuckian--don't say he was a kinsman of yours!--whose papers, if he left any, I want to see”

”To whonity

”To John Adair,” he answered

”Well,” said I, ”John Adair rand whatever you require”

I have spoken of John Hay as Master of the Revels in the old Sutherland-Delmonico days Even earlier than that--in London and Paris--an intimacy had been established between us He married in Cleveland, Ohio, and ain

One day in Whitelaw Reid's den in the Tribune Building he reappeared, strangely changed--no longer the rosy-cheeked, buoyant boy--an overserious, preone Reid, observing this, said: ”Oh, Hay will coht He is just now in one of his moods I picked hiht him over”

When we recall the story of Hay's life--one weird tragedy after another, fro the tragic end of two randeur that pursued hile exclamation: ”The pity of it!”

This is accentuated by Henry Adae hich Hay met disaster after disaster must increase both the syes of that vivid narrative Toward the end,him on a public occasion, I said: ”You work too hard--you are not looking well”

”I a,” said he

”Yes,” I replied in the way of banter, ”you are dying of fame and fortune”

But I went no further He was in no mood for the old verbal horseplay