The tailor adapts the manikin as well as the clothes
to his patron's wants. The tailor's object, in this volume, is to
fit young men, in universities or elsewhere, to be men of the
world, equipped for any emergency; and the garment offered to
them is meant to show the faults of the patchwork fitted on their
fathers.
At the utmost, the active-minded young man should ask of his
teacher only mastery of his tools. The young man himself, the
subject of education, is a certain form of energy; the object to
be gained is economy of his force; the training is partly the
clearing away of obstacles, partly the direct application of
effort. Once acquired, the tools and models may be thrown away.
The manikin, therefore, has the same value as any other
geometrical figure of three or more dimensions, which is used for
the study of relation. For that purpose it cannot be spared; it
is the only measure of motion, of proportion, of human condition;
it must have the air of reality; must be taken for real; must be
treated as though it had life. Who knows? Possibly it had!
February 16, 1907
THE EDUCATION
OF HENRY ADAMS
CHAPTER I
QUINCY (1838-1848)
UNDER the shadow of Boston State House, turning its back on the
house of John Hancock, the little passage called Hancock Avenue
runs, or ran, from Beacon Street, skirting the State House
grounds, to Mount Vernon Street, on the summit of Beacon Hill;
and there, in the third house below Mount Vernon Place, February
16, 1838, a child was born, and christened later by his uncle,
the minister of the First Church after the tenets of Boston
Unitarianism, as Henry Brooks Adams.
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