Much that had
made life pleasant between 1870 and 1890 perished in the ruin,
and among the earliest wreckage had been the fortunes of Clarence
King. The lesson taught whatever the bystander chose to read in
it; but to Adams it seemed singularly full of moral, if he could
but understand it. In 1871 he had thought King's education ideal,
and his personal fitness unrivalled. No other young American
approached him for the combination of chances -- physical energy,
social standing, mental scope and training, wit, geniality, and
science, that seemed superlatively American and irresistibly
strong. His nearest rival was Alexander Agassiz, and, as far as
their friends knew, no one else could be classed with them in the
running. The result of twenty years' effort proved that the
theory of scientific education failed where most theory fails --
for want of money. Even Henry Adams, who kept himself, as he
thought, quite outside of every possible financial risk, had been
caught in the cogs, and held for months over the gulf of
bankruptcy, saved only by the chance that the whole class of
millionaires were more or less bankrupt too, and the banks were
forced to let the mice escape with the rats; but, in sum,
education without capital could always be taken by the throat and
forced to disgorge its gains, nor was it helped by the knowledge
that no one intended it, but that all alike suffered.
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