“Is life worth living?”
“It all depends upon the liver.”
The last time I met Henry Adams I found him delightfully mellowed, like a russet apple in the month of February. His wit was less caustic; it was as if, in spite of himself, the man were softening. It could not have been long after this that he said to the friend who bore him company during the latter stage of the journey:
“I have not heard my wife’s name spoken for over twenty years. That was a great mistake.”
The mistake was largely his own. His friends believed—and no man ever had warmer friends—that Mr. Adams did not wish them to mention his wife after her tragic death. So, wittingly or unwittingly, he and they entered into a conspiracy of silence that was only broken when the sands of his life were nearly run.
[To Laura Richards.]
Washington, March 15, 1910.
This morning our old friend, Franklin MacVeagh, now Secretary of the Treasury, called for us by appointment with the Treasury carriage—rather an old-fashioned turnout with two horses and a colored coachman—and took us to call on President Taft. We drove to the executive offices in one of the new wings McKim has added to the White House. We waited in a big round room with a soft green carpet. A picture of Roosevelt hung on the wall, a vase of pink roses stood on the table under it.
“I brought you early,” Mr. MacVeagh explained, “that you might see the Cabinet assemble and meet the Ministers, while waiting for the President.”
The first to arrive was Mr. Dickinson, Secretary of War.