Chapter II: (p. 101) (4)

Thus at the age of sixty-two years, Mr. Adams found himself that melancholy product of the American governmental system--an ex-President. At this stage it would seem that the fruit ought to drop from the (p. 220) bough, no further process of development being reasonably probable for it. Yet Mr. Adams had by no means reached this measure of ripeness; he still enjoyed abundant vigor of mind and body, and to lapse into dignified decrepitude was not agreeable, indeed was hardly possible for him. The prospect gave him profound anxiety; he dreaded idleness, apathy, and decay with a keen terror which perhaps constituted a sufficient guaranty against them. Yet what could he do? It would be absurd for him now to furbish up the rusty weapons of the law and enter again upon the tedious labor of collecting a clientage. His property was barely sufficient to enable him to live respectably, even according to the simple standard of the time, and could open to him no occupation in the way of gratifying unremunerative tastes. In March, 1828, he had been advised to use five thousand dollars in a way to promote his reëlection. He refused at once, upon principle; but further set forth "candidly, the state of his affairs:"--

"All my real estate in Quincy and Boston is mortgaged for the
payment of my debts; the income of my whole private estate is
less than $6,000 a year, and I am paying at least two thousand of
that for interest on my debt. Finally, upon going out of office
in one year from this time, destitute of all means of (p. 221)
acquiring property, it will only be by the sacrifice of that
which I now possess that I shall be able to support my family."

At first he plunged desperately into the Latin classics. He had a strong taste for such reading, and he made a firm resolve to compel this taste now to stand him in good stead in his hour of need. He courageously demanded solace from a pursuit which had yielded him pleasure enough in hours of relaxation, but which was altogether inadequate to fill the huge vacuum now suddenly created in his time and thoughts. There is much pathos in this spectacle of the old man setting himself with ever so feeble a weapon, yet with stern determination, to conquer the cruelty of circumstances. But he knew, of course, that the Roman authors could only help him for a time, by way of distraction, in carrying him through a transition period. He soon set more cheerfully at work upon a memoir of his father, and had also plans for writing a history of the United States. Literature had always possessed strong charms for him, and he had cultivated it after his usual studious and conscientious fashion. But his style was too often prolix, sententious, and turgid--faults which marked nearly all the writing done in this country in those days. The world has (p. 222) probably not lost much by reason of the non-completion of the contemplated volumes. He could have made no other contribution to the history of the country at all approaching in value or interest to the Diary, of which a most important part was still to be written. For a brief time just now this loses its historic character, but makes up for the loss by depicting admirably some traits in the mental constitution of the diarist. Tales of enchantment, he says, pleased his boyhood, but "the humors of Falstaff hardly affected me at all. Bardolph and Pistol and Nym were personages quite unintelligible to me; and the lesson of Sir Hugh Evans to the boy Williams was quite too serious an affair." In truth, no man can ever have been more utterly void of a sense of humor or an appreciation of wit than was Mr. Adams. Not a single instance of an approach to either is to be found throughout the twelve volumes of his Diary. Not even in the simple form of the "good story" could he find pleasure, and subtler delicacies were wasted on his well-regulated mind as dainty French dishes would be on the wholesome palate of a day-laborer. The books which bore the stamp of well-established approval, the acknowledged classics of the English, Latin, and French languages he read with a mingled sense of duty and of pleasure, and evidently with cultivated appreciation, (p. 223) though whether he would have made an original discovery of their merits may be doubted. Occasionally he failed to admire even those volumes which deserved admiration, and then with characteristic honesty he admitted the fact. He tried Paradise Lost ten times before he could get through with it, and was nearly thirty years old when he first succeeded in reading it to the end. Thereafter he became very fond of it, but plainly by an acquired taste. He tried smoking and Milton, he says, at the same time, in the hope of discovering the "recondite charm" in them which so pleased his father. He was more easily successful with the tobacco than with the poetry. Many another has had the like experience, but the confession is not always so frankly forthcoming.

Fate, however, had in store for Mr. Adams labors to which he was better suited than those of literature, and tasks to be performed which the nation could ill afford to exchange for an apotheosis of our second President, or even for a respectable but probably not very readable history. The most brilliant and glorious years of his career were yet to be lived. He was to earn in his old age a noble fame and distinction far transcending any achievement of his youth and middle age, and was to attain the highest pinnacle of his fame after he (p. 224) had left the greatest office of the Government, and during a period for which presumably nothing better had been allotted than that he should tranquilly await the summons of death. It is a striking circumstance that the fullness of greatness for one who had been Senator, Minister to England, Secretary of State, and President, remained to be won in the comparatively humble position of a Representative in Congress.