The task of accelerating or deflecting the
movement of the American woman had interest infinitely greater
than that of any race whatever, Russian or Chinese, Asiatic or
African.
On this subject, as on the Senate and the banks, Adams was
conscious of having been born an eighteenth-century remainder. As
he grew older, he found that Early Institutions lost their
interest, but that Early Women became a passion. Without
understanding movement of sex, history seemed to him mere
pedantry. So insistent had he become on this side of his subject
that with women he talked of little else, and -- because women's
thought is mostly subconscious and particularly sensitive to
suggestion -- he tried tricks and devices to disclose it. The
woman seldom knows her own thought; she is as curious to
understand herself as the man to understand her, and responds far
more quickly than the man to a sudden idea. Sometimes, at dinner,
one might wait till talk flagged, and then, as mildly as
possible, ask one's liveliest neighbor whether she could explain
why the American woman was a failure. Without an instant's
hesitation, she was sure to answer: "Because the American man is
a failure!" She meant it.
Adams owed more to the American woman than to all the American
men he ever heard of, and felt not the smallest call to defend
his sex who seemed able to take care of themselves; but from the
point of view of sex he felt much curiosity to know how far the
woman was right, and, in pursuing this inquiry, he caught the
trick of affirming that the woman was the superior.
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