Society needed to reach
it. If moral standards broke down, and machinery stopped working,
new morals and machinery of some sort had to be invented. An
eternity of Grants, or even of Garfields or of Conklings or of
Jay Goulds, refused to be conceived as possible. Practical
Americans laughed, and went their way. Society paid them to be
practical. Whenever society cared to pay Adams, he too would be
practical, take his pay, and hold his tongue; but meanwhile he
was driven to associate with Democratic Congressmen and educate
them. He served David Wells as an active assistant professor of
revenue reform, and turned his rooms into a college. The
Administration drove him, and thousands of other young men, into
active enmity, not only to Grant, but to the system or want of
system, which took possession of the President. Every hope or
thought which had brought Adams to Washington proved to be
absurd. No one wanted him; no one wanted any of his friends in
reform; the blackmailer alone was the normal product of politics
as of business.
All this was excessively amusing. Adams never had been so busy,
so interested, so much in the thick of the crowd. He knew
Congressmen by scores and newspaper-men by the dozen. He wrote
for his various organs all sorts of attacks and defences. He
enjoyed the life enormously, and found himself as happy as Sam
Ward or Sunset Cox; much happier than his friends Fish or J.
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