To him
the attitude of Mr. Chamberlain and his colleagues seemed
exceedingly un-American, and terribly embarrassing to Hay.
Trained early, in the stress of civil war, to hold his tongue,
and to help make the political machine run somehow, since it
could never be made to run well, he would not bother Hay with
theoretical objections which were every day fretting him in
practical forms. Hay's chance lay in patience and good-temper
till the luck should turn, and to him the only object was time;
but as political education the point seemed vital to Adams, who
never liked shutting his eyes or denying an evident fact.
Practical politics consists in ignoring facts, but education and
politics are two different and often contradictory things. In
this case, the contradiction seemed crude.
With Hay's politics, at home or abroad, Adams had nothing
whatever to do. Hay belonged to the New York school, like Abram
Hewitt, Evarts, W. C. Whitney, Samuel J. Tilden -- men who played
the game for ambition or amusement, and played it, as a rule,
much better than the professionals, but whose aims were
considerably larger than those of the usual player, and who felt
no great love for the cheap drudgery of the work. In return, the
professionals felt no great love for them, and set them aside
when they could. Only their control of money made them
inevitable, and even this did not always carry their points.
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