Europe was waiting to see them
go. So certain was the end that no one cared to hurry it.
So far as a private secretary could see, this was all that saved
his father. For many months he looked on himself as lost or
finished in the character of private secretary; and as about to
begin, without further experiment, a final education in the ranks
of the Army of the Potomac where he would find most of his
friends enjoying a much pleasanter life than his own. With this
idea uppermost in his mind, he passed the summer and the autumn,
and began the winter. Any winter in London is a severe trial;
one's first winter is the most trying; but the month of December,
1861, in Mansfield Street, Portland Place, would have gorged a
glutton of gloom.
One afternoon when he was struggling to resist complete nervous
depression in the solitude of Mansfield Street, during the
absence of the Minister and Mrs. Adams on a country visit,
Reuter's telegram announcing the seizure of Mason and Slidell
from a British mail-steamer was brought to the office. All three
secretaries, public and private were there -- nervous as wild
beasts under the long strain on their endurance -- and all three,
though they knew it to be not merely their order of departure --
not merely diplomatic rupture -- but a declaration of war --
broke into shouts of delight.
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