life appears in the now celebrated diary of Henry Adams, a man who "had everything," born into the governing class yet holding no higher office than that of private secretary to his father, unless it was the position of assistant professor of history at Harvard. When the latter position was offered to him, he remarked in a blasé tone which would have thunderstruck his great-grandfather: "It could not much affect the sum of solar energies whether one went on dancing with girls in Washington, or began talking to boys in Cambridge." Still more striking is Adams' analysis of the American character in government circles. It might be true, he said, in New York or Chicago, that the American was "a pushing, energetic, ingenious person, always awake and trying to get ahead of his neighbors;" but it was not true in Washington. "There the American showed himself, four times in five, as a quiet, peaceful, shy figure, rather in the mould of Abraham Lincoln, somewhat sad, sometimes pathetic, once tragic; or like Grant, as inarticulate, uncertain, distrustful of himself, still more distrustful of others, and awed by money. That the American by temperament worked to excess, was true; work and whiskey were his stimulants; work was a form of vice; but he never cared much for money or power after he earned them. The amusement of the pursuit was all the amusement he got from it; he had no use for wealth."
While the national mind was absorbed in business
