ABSTRACT
Life under the slender elms of the Harvard Yard buffered the passions that raged across the river in Boston. Politics, except the college variety, seemed no longer important. Henry Adams of Harvard had new ideas, new emotions, and several new prejudices. At home, politics seemed to grind hungrily upon itself, like sliding gears. The other side seemed to be having it all its own way. Everything was personal and social—an opposite kind of emphasis from the transcended puritanism of home, where everything was public, passionate, and sacrificial. At Harvard young Adams switched abruptly to a new tempo. Here, in this small community, a brake was put upon untempered enthusiasm. Negative happiness seemed a small kind of climax. The curious super-calm of “My Old Room” give away the feeling of boredom. Surely there were other ways of living and feeling and thinking than the way of negative happiness.
