On December 3, 1841,
he developed scarlet fever. For several days he was as good as
dead, reviving only under the careful nursing of his family. When
he began to recover strength, about January 1, 1842, his hunger
must have been stronger than any other pleasure or pain, for
while in after life he retained not the faintest recollection of
his illness, he remembered quite clearly his aunt entering the
sickroom bearing in her hand a saucer with a baked apple.
The order of impressions retained by memory might naturally be
that of color and taste, although one would rather suppose that
the sense of pain would be first to educate. In fact, the third
recollection of the child was that of discomfort. The moment he
could be removed, he was bundled up in blankets and carried from
the little house in Hancock Avenue to a larger one which his
parents were to occupy for the rest of their lives in the
neighboring Mount Vernon Street. The season was midwinter,
January 10, 1842, and he never forgot his acute distress for want
of air under his blankets, or the noises of moving furniture.
As a means of variation from a normal type, sickness in
childhood ought to have a certain value not to be classed under
any fitness or unfitness of natural selection; and especially
scarlet fever affected boys seriously, both physically and in
character, though they might through life puzzle themselves to
decide whether it had fitted or unfitted them for success; but
this fever of Henry Adams took greater and greater importance in
his eyes, from the point of view of education, the longer he
lived.
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