With the editor's letter under his eyes, Adams asked himself
what better he could have done. On the whole, considering his
helplessness, he thought he had done as well as his neighbors. No
one could yet guess which of his contemporaries was most likely
to play a part in the great world. A shrewd prophet in Wall
Street might perhaps have set a mark on Pierpont Morgan, but
hardly on the Rockefellers or William C. Whitney or Whitelaw
Reid. No one would have picked out William McKinley or John Hay
or Mark Hanna for great statesmen. Boston was ignorant of the
careers in store for Alexander Agassiz and Henry Higginson.
Phillips Brooks was unknown; Henry James was unheard; Howells was
new; Richardson and LaFarge were struggling for a start. Out of
any score of names and reputations that should reach beyond the
century, the thirty-years-old who were starting in the year 1867
could show none that was so far in advance as to warrant odds in
its favor. The army men had for the most part fallen to the
ranks. Had Adams foreseen the future exactly as it came, he would
have been no wiser, and could have chosen no better path.
Thus it turned out that the last year in England was the
pleasantest. He was already old in society, and belonged to the
Silurian horizon. The Prince of Wales had come. Mr. Disraeli,
Lord Stanley, and the future Lord Salisbury had thrown into the
background the memories of Palmerston and Russell.
Pages:
333
334
335
336
337
338
339
340
341
342
343
344
345
346
347
348
349
350
351
352
353
354
355
356
357