how was one to support it? One must first find it, and even then
it was not easily caught. Grant's simplicity was more
disconcerting than the complexity of a Talleyrand. Mr. Fish
afterwards told Adams, with the rather grim humor he sometimes
indulged in, that Grant took a dislike to Motley because he
parted his hair in the middle. Adams repeated the story to
Godkin, who made much play with it in the Nation, till it was
denied. Adams saw no reason why it should be denied. Grant had as
good a right to dislike the hair as the head, if the hair seemed
to him a part of it. Very shrewd men have formed very sound
judgments on less material than hair -- on clothes, for example,
according to Mr. Carlyle, or on a pen, according to Cardinal de
Retz -- and nine men in ten could hardly give as good a reason as
hair for their likes or dislikes. In truth, Grant disliked Motley
at sight, because they had nothing in common; and for the same
reason he disliked Sumner. For the same reason he would be sure
to dislike Adams if Adams gave him a chance. Even Fish could not
be quite sure of Grant, except for the powerful effect which
wealth had, or appeared to have, on Grant's imagination.

The quarrel that lowered over the State Department did not
break in storm till July, 1870, after Adams had vanished, but
another quarrel, almost as fatal to Adams as that between Fish
and Sumner, worried him even more. Of all members of the Cabinet,
the one whom he had most personal interest in cultivating was
Attorney General Hoar. The Legal Tender decision, which had been
the first stumbling-block to Adams at Washington, grew in
interest till it threatened to become something more serious than
a block; it fell on one's head like a plaster ceiling, and could
not be escaped. The impending battle between Fish and Sumner was