most men, a double personality; and his person feels best
satisfied in its double instincts when writing in one sense and
thinking in another. All newspaper-men, whatever they wrote, felt
alike about the Senate. Adams floated with the stream. He was
eager to join in the fight which he foresaw as sooner or later
inevitable. He meant to support the Executive in attacking the
Senate and taking away its two-thirds vote and power of
confirmation, nor did he much care how it should be done, for he
thought it safer to effect the revolution in 1870 than to wait
till 1920..

With this thought in his mind, he went to the Capitol to hear
the names announced which should reveal the carefully guarded
secret of Grant's Cabinet. To the end of his life, he wondered at
the suddenness of the revolution which actually, within five
minutes, changed his intended future into an absurdity so
laughable as to make him ashamed of it. He was to hear a long
list of Cabinet announcements not much weaker or more futile than
that of Grant, and none of them made him blush, while Grant's
nominations had the singular effect of making the hearer ashamed,
not so much of Grant, as of himself. He had made another total
misconception of life -- another inconceivable false start. Yet,
unlikely as it seemed, he had missed his motive narrowly, and his
intention had been more than sound, for the Senators made no
secret of saying with senatorial frankness that Grant's
nominations betrayed his intent as plainly as they betrayed his
incompetence. A great soldier might be a baby politician.

Adams left the Capitol, much in the same misty mental condition
that he recalled as marking his railway journey to London on May