Nowhere else does
the uncharitable autumn wreak its spite so harshly on the frail
wreck of the grasshopper summer; yet even a Quincy November
seemed temperate before the chill of a Boston January.
This was saying much, for the November of 1860 at Quincy stood
apart from other memories as lurid beyond description. Although
no one believed in civil war, the air reeked of it, and the
Republicans organized their clubs and parades as Wide-Awakes in a
form military in all things except weapons. Henry reached home in
time to see the last of these processions, stretching in ranks of
torches along the hillside, file down through the November night;
to the Old House, where Mr. Adams, their Member of Congress,
received them, and, let them pretend what they liked, their air
was not that of innocence.
Profoundly ignorant, anxious, and curious, the young man packed
his modest trunk again, which had not yet time to be unpacked,
and started for Washington with his family. Ten years had passed
since his last visit, but very little had changed. As in 1800 and
1850, so in 1860, the same rude colony was camped in the same
forest, with the same unfinished Greek temples for work rooms,
and sloughs for roads. The Government had an air of social
instability and incompleteness that went far to support the right
of secession in theory as in fact; but right or wrong, secession
was likely to be easy where there was so little to secede from.
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