Finally, no label like that of
realist can possibly do full justice to Henry Adams .
In a seemingly simple anecdote, The Education of Henry Adams proposes to teach its readers the primary lesson of its author's birth and life: "The Irish gardener once said to the child: 'You'll be thinkin' you'll be President too!' The casualty of the remark made so strong an impression on his mind that he never forgot it. He could not remember ever to have thought on the subject; to him, that there should be a doubt of his being President was a new idea. What had been would continue to be. He doubted neither about Presidents nor about Churches, and no one suggested at that time a doubt whether a system of society which had lasted since Adam would outlast one Adams more."
The truth is that Henry Adams never quite outgrew "thinkin' you'll be President too!" Almost all of his life and nearly everything he wrote showed signs of a powerful family influence, the results of his fourth-generation membership in the Adams clan, that most remarkable of American political families, which had provided two presidents, John Adams and John Quincy Adams, and a minister to the court of St.
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