'The revelation of myself to myself was positively shocking.... It wasn't that the thing was bad or that my record was discreditable; it was worse! It was silly. That it was crude, goes without saying. _That_ I didn't mind! But I did blush and groan and swear over its unmistakable, unconscious immaturity and ineptitude, its conceit, its weakness and its cant.... As I finished each volume it went into the fire; and I stood over it until the last leaf was ashes.... I have never felt the same about myself since. I now humbly thank fortune that I have got almost through life without making a conspicuous ass of myself.' Mr Adams, immediately after the period covered by the diary, plunged into the Civil War, and emerged with the well-earned brevet rank of brigadier-general. He was later eminent as publicist, author, administrator, a recognised leader of thought in a troublous time. He became president of the Union Pacific Railroad. And at the last he was the subject of a memorial address by the Honorable Henry Cabot Lodge. As Henry is still several years short of twenty-five perhaps there is hope for him. Concord, Mass. S. M. I--THE IRRATIONAL ANIMAL 1 |It was late May in Sunbury, Illinois, and twenty minutes past eight in the morning. The spacious lawns and the wide strips of turf between sidewalk and roadway in every avenue and street were lush with crowding young blades of green. The maples, oaks, and elms were vivid with the exuberant youth of the year. Throughout the village, brisk young men, care-worn men of middle age, a few elderly men were hurrying toward the old red-brick station whence the eight-twenty-nine would shortly carry them into the dust and sweat and smoke of a business day in Chicago. The swarms of sleepy-eyed clerks, book-keepers, office boys and girl stenographers had gone in on the seven-eleven and the seven-thirty-two.