He
was little more fit than the Virginians to deal with a future
America which showed no fancy for the past. Already Northern
society betrayed a preference for economists over diplomats or
soldiers -- one might even call it a jealousy -- against which
two eighteenth-century types had little chance to live, and which
they had in common to fear.
Nothing short of this curious sympathy could have brought into
close relations two young men so hostile as Roony Lee and Henry
Adams, but the chief difference between them as collegians
consisted only in their difference of scholarship: Lee was a
total failure; Adams a partial one. Both failed, but Lee felt his
failure more sensibly, so that he gladly seized the chance of
escape by accepting a commission offered him by General Winfield
Scott in the force then being organized against the Mormons. He
asked Adams to write his letter of acceptance, which flattered
Adams's vanity more than any Northern compliment could do,
because, in days of violent political bitterness, it showed a
certain amount of good temper. The diplomat felt his profession.
If the student got little from his mates, he got little more
from his masters. The four years passed at college were, for his
purposes, wasted. Harvard College was a good school, but at
bottom what the boy disliked most was any school at all.
Pages:
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106