as of business.

All this was excessively amusing. Adams never had been so busy,
so interested, so much in the thick of the crowd. He knew
Congressmen by scores and newspaper-men by the dozen. He wrote
for his various organs all sorts of attacks and defences. He
enjoyed the life enormously, and found himself as happy as Sam
Ward or Sunset Cox; much happier than his friends Fish or J. D.
Cox, or Chief Justice Chase or Attorney General Hoar or Charles
Sumner. When spring came, he took to the woods, which were best
of all, for after the first of April, what Maurice de Guerin
called "the vast maternity" of nature showed charms more
voluptuous than the vast paternity of the United States Senate.
Senators were less ornamental than the dogwood or even the
judas-tree. They were, as a rule, less good company. Adams
astonished himself by remarking what a purified charm was lent to
the Capitol by the greatest possible distance, as one caught
glimpses of the dome over miles of forest foliage. At such
moments he pondered on the distant beauty of St. Peter's and the
steps of Ara Coeli.

Yet he shortened his spring, for he needed to get back to
London for the season. He had finished his New York "Gold
Conspiracy," which he meant for his friend Henry Reeve and the
Edinburgh Review. It was the best piece of work he had done, but
this was not his reason for publishing it in England. The Erie
scandal had provoked a sort of revolt among respectable New
Yorkers, as well as among some who were not so respectable; and
the attack on Erie was beginning to promise success. London was a
sensitive spot for the Erie management, and it was thought well