They could teach little
worth learning, for their tastes were antiquated and their
knowledge was ignorance to the next generation. What was
altogether fatal for future purposes, they were only English.
A social education in such a medium was bound to be useless in
any other, yet Adams had to learn it to the bottom. The one thing
needful for a private secretary, was that he should not only
seem, but should actually be, at home. He studied carefully, and
practised painfully, what seemed to be the favorite
accomplishments of society. Perhaps his nervousness deceived him;
perhaps he took for an ideal of others what was only his
reflected image; but he conceived that the perfection of human
society required that a man should enter a drawing-room where he
was a total stranger, and place himself on the hearth-rug, his
back to the fire, with an air of expectant benevolence, without
curiosity, much as though he had dropped in at a charity concert,
kindly disposed to applaud the performers and to overlook
mistakes. This ideal rarely succeeded in youth, and towards
thirty it took a form of modified insolence and offensive
patronage; but about sixty it mellowed into courtesy, kindliness,
and even deference to the young which had extraordinary charm
both in women and in men. Unfortunately Adams could not wait till
sixty for education; he had his living to earn; and the English
air of patronage would earn no income for him anywhere else.
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