the end with Adams himself, although they and he knew well how
thin an edge of friendship separated them in 1856 from mortal
enmity. One of the Virginians was the son of Colonel Robert E.
Lee, of the Second United States Cavalry; the two others who
seemed instinctively to form a staff for Lee, were
town-Virginians from Petersburg. A fourth outsider came from
Cincinnati and was half Kentuckian, N. L. Anderson, Longworth on
the mother's side. For the first time Adams's education brought
him in contact with new types and taught him their values. He saw
the New England type measure itself with another, and he was part
of the process.

Lee, known through life as "Roony," was a Virginian of the
eighteenth century, much as Henry Adams was a Bostonian of the
same age. Roony Lee had changed little from the type of his
grandfather, Light Horse Harry. Tall, largely built, handsome,
genial, with liberal Virginian openness towards all he liked, he
had also the Virginian habit of command and took leadership as
his natural habit. No one cared to contest it. None of the New
Englanders wanted command. For a year, at least, Lee was the most
popular and prominent young man in his class, but then seemed
slowly to drop into the background. The habit of command was not
enough, and the Virginian had little else. He was simple beyond
analysis; so simple that even the simple New England student
could not realize him. No one knew enough to know how ignorant he
was; how childlike; how helpless before the relative complexity
of a school. As an animal, the Southerner seemed to have every
advantage, but even as an animal he steadily lost ground.

The lesson in education was vital to these young men, who,