Everett. Edward Everett was then
President of the college and lived in the old President's House
on Harvard Square. The boy remembered the drawing-room, on the
left of the hall door, in which Mrs. Everett received them. He
remembered a marble greyhound in the corner. The house had an air
of colonial self-respect that impressed even a nine-year-old
child.
When Adams closed his interview with President Eliot, he asked
the Bursar about his aunt's old drawing-room, for the house had
been turned to base uses. The room and the deserted kitchen
adjacent to it were to let. He took them. Above him, his brother
Brooks, then a law student, had rooms, with a private staircase.
Opposite was J. R. Dennett, a young instructor almost as literary
as Adams himself, and more rebellious to conventions. Inquiry
revealed a boarding-table, somewhere in the neighborhood, also
supposed to be superior in its class. Chauncey Wright, Francis
Wharton, Dennett, John Fiske, or their equivalents in learning
and lecture, were seen there, among three or four law students
like Brooks Adams. With these primitive arrangements, all of them
had to be satisfied. The standard was below that of Washington,
but it was, for the moment, the best.
For the next nine months the Assistant Professor had no time to
waste on comforts or amusements. He exhausted all his strength in
trying to keep one day ahead of his duties.
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