Evarts took him to Washington in October, 1868.
Adams accepted the hospitality of the sleeper, with deep
gratitude, the more because his first struggle with a
sleeping-car made him doubt the value -- to him -- of a Pullman
civilization; but he was even more grateful for the shelter of
Mr. Evarts's house in H Street at the corner of Fourteenth, where
he abode in safety and content till he found rooms in the
roomless village. To him the village seemed unchanged. Had he not
known that a great war and eight years of astonishing movement
had passed over it, he would have noticed nothing that betrayed
growth. As of old, houses were few; rooms fewer; even the men
were the same. No one seemed to miss the usual comforts of
civilization, and Adams was glad to get rid of them, for his best
chance lay in the eighteenth century.
The first step, of course, was the making of acquaintance, and
the first acquaintance was naturally the President, to whom an
aspirant to the press officially paid respect. Evarts immediately
took him to the White House and presented him to President Andrew
Johnson. The interview was brief and consisted in the stock
remark common to monarchs and valets, that the young man looked
even younger than he was. The younger man felt even younger than
he looked. He never saw the President again, and never felt a
wish to see him, for Andrew Johnson was not the sort of man whom
a young reformer of thirty, with two or three foreign educations,
was likely to see with enthusiasm; yet, musing over the interview
as a matter of education, long years afterwards, he could not
help recalling the President's figure with a distinctness that
surprised him.
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