Hay himself, probably for the first time,
felt half glad that Roosevelt should want him to stay in office,
if only to save himself the trouble of quitting; but to Adams all
was pure loss. On that side, his education had been finished at
school. His friends in power were lost, and he knew life too well
to risk total wreck by trying to save them.
As far as concerned Roosevelt, the chance was hopeless. To them
at sixty-three, Roosevelt at forty-three could not be taken
seriously in his old character, and could not be recovered in his
new one. Power when wielded by abnormal energy is the most
serious of facts, and all Roosevelt's friends know that his
restless and combative energy was more than abnormal. Roosevelt,
more than any other man living within the range of notoriety,
showed the singular primitive quality that belongs to ultimate
matter -- the quality that mediaeval theology assigned to God --
he was pure act. With him wielding unmeasured power with
immeasurable energy, in the White House, the relation of age to
youth -- of teacher to pupil -- was altogether out of place; and
no other was possible. Even Hay's relation was a false one, while
Adams's ceased of itself. History's truths are little valuable
now; but human nature retains a few of its archaic, proverbial
laws, and the wisest courtier that ever lived -- Lucius Seneca
himself -- must have remained in some shade of doubt what
advantage he should get from the power of his friend and pupil
Nero Claudius, until, as a gentleman past sixty, he received
Nero's filial invitation to kill himself.
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