Alexander Agassiz and Phillips Brooks led it; H.
H. Richardson and O. W. Holmes helped to close it. As a rule the
most promising of all die early, and never get their names into a
Dictionary of Contemporaries, which seems to be the only popular
standard of success. Many died in the war. Adams knew them all,
more or less; he felt as much regard, and quite as much respect
for them then, as he did after they won great names and were
objects of a vastly wider respect; but, as help towards
education, he got nothing whatever from them or they from him
until long after they had left college. Possibly the fault was
his, but one would like to know how many others shared it.
Accident counts for much in companionship as in marriage. Life
offers perhaps only a score of possible companions, and it is
mere chance whether they meet as early as school or college, but
it is more than a chance that boys brought up together under like
conditions have nothing to give each other. The Class of 1858, to
which Henry Adams belonged, was a typical collection of young New
Englanders, quietly penetrating and aggressively commonplace;
free from meannesses, jealousies, intrigues, enthusiasms, and
passions; not exceptionally quick; not consciously skeptical;
singularly indifferent to display, artifice, florid expression,
but not hostile to it when it amused them; distrustful of
themselves, but little disposed to trust any one else; with not
much humor of their own, but full of readiness to enjoy the humor
of others; negative to a degree that in the long run became
positive and triumphant.
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