If Samuel Adams at the age of forty-two was known for a man who could not successfully manage his own affairs, he was also known, and very well known, for a man with a singular talent for managing the affairs of the community; he could manage successfully, for example, town meetings and every sort of business, great or small, incidental to local politics. This talent he may have inherited from his father, who was himself a notable of the neighborhood--one of the organizers of the "New South" church, and prominent about 1724 in a club popularly known as the "Caulkers' Club," formed for the purpose of laying "plans for introducing certain persons into places of trust and power," and was himself from time to time introduced into such places of trust and power as justice of the peace, deacon, selectman, and member of the provincial assembly. From an early age, the younger Samuel exhibited a marked aptitude for this sort of activity, and was less likely to be found "in his counting-house a-counting of his money" than in some hospitable tavern or back shop discussing town topics with local worthies. Samuel Adams was born to serve on committees. He had the innate slant of mind that properly belongs to a moderator of mass meetings called to aggravate a crisis. With the soul of a Jacobin, he was most at home in clubs, secret clubs of which everyone had heard and few were members, designed at best to accomplish some particular good for the people, at all events meeting regularly to sniff the approach of tyranny in the abstract, academically safeguarding the commonwealth by discussing the first principles of government.