Any public man who
may for years have used some other man's house as his own, when
promoted to a position of patronage commonly feels himself
obliged to inquire, directly or indirectly, whether his friend
wants anything; which is equivalent to a civil act of divorce,
since he feels awkward in the old relation. The handsomest
formula, in an impartial choice, was the grandly courteous
Southern phrase of Lamar: "Of course Mr. Adams knows that
anything in my power is at his service." A la disposicion de
Usted! The form must have been correct since it released both
parties. He was right; Mr. Adams did know all about it; a bow and
a conventional smile closed the subject forever, and every one
felt flattered.
Such an intimate, promoted to power, was always lost. His
duties and cares absorbed him and affected his balance of mind.
Unless his friend served some political purpose, friendship was
an effort. Men who neither wrote for newspapers nor made campaign
speeches, who rarely subscribed to the campaign fund, and who
entered the White House as seldom as possible, placed themselves
outside the sphere of usefulness, and did so with entirely
adequate knowledge of what they were doing. They never expected
the President to ask for their services, and saw no reason why he
should do so. As for Henry Adams, in fifty years that he knew
Washington, no one would have been more surprised than himself
had any President ever asked him to perform so much of a service
as to cross the square.
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