Everything
conspired to ruin his sound scheme of life, and to make him a
vagrant as well as pauper. He went on to Naples, and there, in
the hot June, heard rumors that Garibaldi and his thousand were
about to attack Palermo. Calling on the American Minister,
Chandler of Pennsylvania, he was kindly treated, not for his
merit, but for his name, and Mr. Chandler amiably consented to
send him to the seat of war as bearer of despatches to Captain
Palmer of the American sloop of war Iroquois. Young Adams seized
the chance, and went to Palermo in a government transport filled
with fleas, commanded by a charming Prince Caracciolo.
He told all about it to the Boston Courier; where the narrative
probably exists to this day, unless the files of the Courier have
wholly perished; but of its bearing on education the Courier did
not speak. He himself would have much liked to know whether it
had any bearing whatever, and what was its value as a
post-graduate course. Quite apart from its value as life
attained, realized, capitalized, it had also a certain value as a
lesson in something, though Adams could never classify the branch
of study. Loosely, the tourist called it knowledge of men, but it
was just the reverse; it was knowledge of one's ignorance of men.
Captain Palmer of the Iroquois, who was a friend of the young
man's uncle, Sydney Brooks, took him with the officers of the
ship to make an evening call on Garibaldi, whom they found in the
Senate House towards sunset, at supper with his picturesque and
piratic staff, in the full noise and color of the Palermo
revolution.
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