to know, gives us a peep inside one of these clubs,
the "Caucus Club," which met regularly at one period in the garret of
Tom Dawes's house. "There they smoke tobacco till you cannot see from
one end of the garret to the other. There they drink flip, I suppose,
and there they choose a moderator who puts questions to the vote
regularly; and selectmen, assessors, collectors, wardens, fire-wards,
and representatives are regularly chosen before they are chosen in
the town. Uncle Fairfield, Story, Ruddock, Adams, Cooper, and a rudis
indigestaque moles of others are members. They send committees to wait
on the merchants' club, and to propose and join in the choice of men
and measures." The artist Copley, in the familiar portrait by which
posterity knows Samuel Adams, chose to represent him in conventional
garb, on a public and dramatic occasion, standing erect, eyes flashing
and mouth firmset, pointing with admonitory finger to the Charter of
Massachusetts Bay--a portrait well suited to hang in the Art Museum or
in the meeting place of the Daughters of the Revolution. A different
effect would have been produced if the man had been placed in Tom
Dawes's garret, dimly seen through tobacco smoke, sitting, with coat
off, drinking flip, in the midst of Uncle Fairfield, Story, Cooper, and
a rudis indigestaque moles. This was his native habitat, an environment
precisely suited to his peculiar talent.

Samuel Adams had a peculiar talent, that indispensable combination of
qualities possessed by all great revolutionists of the crusading type,
such as Jean Jacques Rousseau, John Brown, or Mazzini. When a man
abandons his business or job and complacently leaves the clothing of his
children to wife or neighbors in order to drink flip and talk politics,
ordinary folk are content to call him a lazy lout, ne'er-do-well,
worthless fellow, or scamp. Samuel Adams was not a scamp. He might have
been no more than a ne'er-do-well, perhaps, if cosmic forces had not
opportunely provided him with an occupation which his contemporaries and
posterity could regard as a high service to humanity. In his own eyes,
this was the view of the situation which justified his conduct. When
he was about to depart for the first Continental Congress, a number of
friends contributed funds to furnish him forthwith presentable apparel:
a suit of clothes, new wig, new hat, "six pair of the best silk hose,
six pair of fine thread ditto,....six pair of shoes"; and, it being