The
Irish gardener once said to the child: "You'll be thinkin' you'll
be President too!" The casuality of the remark made so strong an
impression on his mind that he never forgot it. He could not
remember ever to have thought on the subject; to him, that there
should be a doubt of his being President was a new idea. What had
been would continue to be. He doubted neither about Presidents
nor about Churches, and no one suggested at that time a doubt
whether a system of society which had lasted since Adam would
outlast one Adams more.
The Madam was a little more remote than the President, but more
decorative. She stayed much in her own room with the Dutch tiles,
looking out on her garden with the box walks, and seemed a
fragile creature to a boy who sometimes brought her a note or a
message, and took distinct pleasure in looking at her delicate
face under what seemed to him very becoming caps. He liked her
refined figure ; her gentle voice and manner; her vague effect of
not belonging there, but to Washington or to Europe, like her
furniture, and writing-desk with little glass doors above and
little eighteenth-century volumes in old binding, labelled
"Peregrine Pickle" or "Tom Jones" or "Hannah More." Try as she
might, the Madam could never be Bostonian, and it was her cross
in life, but to the boy it was her charm.
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