what strangeness should he feel? The families were intimate; so
intimate that their friendliness outlived generations, civil war,
and all sorts of rupture. President Taylor owed his election to
Martin Van Buren and the Free Soil Party. To him, the Adamses
might still be of use. As for the White House, all the boy's
family had lived there, and, barring the eight years of Andrew
Jackson's reign, had been more or less at home there ever since
it was built. The boy half thought he owned it, and took for
granted that he should some day live in it. He felt no sensation
whatever before Presidents. A President was a matter of course in
every respectable family; he had two in his own; three, if he
counted old Nathaniel Gorham, who, was the oldest and first in
distinction. Revolutionary patriots, or perhaps a Colonial
Governor, might be worth talking about, but any one could be
President, and some very shady characters were likely to be.
Presidents, Senators, Congressmen, and such things were swarming
in every street.

Every one thought alike whether they had ancestors or not. No
sort of glory hedged Presidents as such, and, in the whole
country, one could hardly have met with an admission of respect
for any office or name, unless it were George Washington. That
was -- to all appearance sincerely -- respected. People made
pilgrimages to Mount Vernon and made even an effort to build
Washington a monument. The effort had failed, but one still went
to Mount Vernon, although it was no easy trip. Mr. Adams took the
boy there in a carriage and pair, over a road that gave him a
complete Virginia education for use ten years afterwards. To the
New England mind, roads, schools, clothes, and a clean face were
connected as part of the law of order or divine system. Bad roads