The Harvard graduate was neither American nor
European, nor even wholly Yankee; his admirers were few, and his
many; perhaps his worst weakness was his self-criticism and
self-consciousness; but his ambitions, social or intellectual,
were necessarily cheap even though they might be negative. Afraid
of such serious risks, and still more afraid of personal
ridicule, he seldom made a great failure of life, and nearly
always led a life more or less worth living. So Henry Adams, well
aware that he could not succeed as a scholar, and finding his
social position beyond improvement or need of effort, betook
himself to the single ambition which otherwise would scarcely
have seemed a true outcome of the college, though it was the last
remnant of the old Unitarian supremacy. He took to the pen. He
wrote.
The College Magazine printed his work, and the College
Societies listened to his addresses. Lavish of praise the readers
were not; the audiences, too, listened in silence; but this was
all the encouragement any Harvard collegian had a reasonable hope
to receive; grave silence was a form of patience that meant
possible future acceptance; and Henry Adams went on writing. No
one cared enough to criticise, except himself who soon began to
suffer from reaching his own limits. He found that he could not
be this -- or that -- or the other; always precisely the things
he wanted to be.
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