the benefit of an Opposition; both were rather new to me.

My third interview with him was at a later period, when his discourse
turned upon this question: What is the greatest thing that a man can do?
His answer was characteristic of the statesman. "It is," he said, "to
speak the true and saving word in a great national emergency. For it
implies," he continued, "the fullest knowledge of the past, the largest
comprehension of the present, and the clearest foresight of the future."
He might have added, to complete the idea, that this word was sometimes
to be spoken when it involved the greatest peril to the position and
prospects of the speaker. But how much moral considerations were apt to
be present to his mind, I do not know. He was mostly known--so we of the
North thought--as an impracticable reasoner. Miss Martineau said, "He
was like a cast-iron man on a railroad."

I was introduced to Mr. Adams, but saw him little, and heard him less,
as I will relate. Mr. Reed, of Barnstable, introduced me,--"Father
Reed," as they used to call him, from his having been longer a member
of Congress than any other man in the House,--and I said to him, as we
were entering the White House, "Now tell Mr. Adams who I am and where
from; for I think he must be puzzled what to talk about, with so many
strangers coming to him." Well, I was intro-[113]duced accordingly, and
Mr. Reed retired. I was offered a seat, and took it. I was a young man,
and felt that it did not become me to open a conversation. And there we
sat, five minutes, with>tit a word being spoken by either of us! I
rose, took my leave, and went away, I don't know whether more angered or
astonished. I once, by the by, visited his father, old John Adams, then
lying in retirement at Quincy. Mr. Josiah Quincy took me to see him. He
was not silent, but talked, I remember, full ten minutes--for ye did not
interrupt him--about Machiavelli and in language so well chosen that I
thought it night have been printed.

But the most interesting person, as statesman, hat I saw in Washington,
was Thomas Corwin, of Ohio, commonly called Tom Corwin. This was a later
period.

Circumstances, or the chances of conversation, sometimes lead to
acquaintance and friendship, which years of ordinary intercourse fail
to bring about. It happened, the first time I saw Mr. Corwin, that some
observation I made upon political normality seemed to strike him as a
new thought; suppose it was a topic seldom