Democracy An American Novel

by Henry Adams




First published anonymously, March 1880, and soon in various
unauthorized editions. It wasn't until the 1925 edition that Adams
was listed as author. Henry Adams remarked (ironically as usual),
"The wholesale piracy of Democracy was the single real triumph
of my life."--it was very popular, as readers tried to guess who the
author was and who the characters really were. Chapters XII and
XIII were originally misnumbered.



Chapter I


FOR reasons which many persons thought ridiculous, Mrs.
Lightfoot Lee decided to pass the winter in Washington. She was
in excellent health, but she said that the climate would do her
good. In New York she had troops of friends, but she suddenly
became eager to see again the very small number of those who
lived on the Potomac. It was only to her closest intimates that she
honestly acknowledged herself to be tortured by ennui. Since her
husband's death, five years before, she had lost her taste for New
York society; she had felt no interest in the price of stocks, and
very little in the men who dealt in them; she had become serious.