support; something that would let itself be supported. Luck went
dead against him. For once, he was fifty years in advance of his
time.


CHAPTER XVIII

FREE FIGHT (1869-1870)

THE old New Englander was apt to be a solitary animal, but the
young New Englander was sometimes human. Judge Hoar brought his
son Sam to Washington, and Sam Hoar loved largely and well. He
taught Adams the charm of Washington spring. Education for
education, none ever compared with the delight of this. The
Potomac and its tributaries squandered beauty. Rock Creek was as
wild as the Rocky Mountains. Here and there a negro log cabin
alone disturbed the dogwood and the judas-tree, the azalea and
the laurel. The tulip and the chestnut gave no sense of struggle
against a stingy nature. The soft, full outlines of the landscape
carried no hidden horror of glaciers in its bosom. The brooding
heat of the profligate vegetation; the cool charm of the running
water; the terrific splendor of the June thunder-gust in the deep
and solitary woods, were all sensual, animal, elemental. No
European spring had shown him the same intermixture of delicate
grace and passionate depravity that marked the Maryland May. He
loved it too much, as though it were Greek and half human. He
could not leave it, but loitered on into July, falling into the
Southern ways of the summer village about La Fayette Square, as
one whose rights of inheritance could not be questioned. Few
Americans were so poor as to question them.