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I found this emphasized especially in the old society of Washington, which takes its traditions from Washington's time or even the pre-Revolutionary period. For such society a self-made man was impossible. Such are the remarkable, indeed astounding, ramifications of the social system of a people who cry to heaven of their democracy. "Americans are all equal this is one of the gems in our diadem."
I found him and his family at supper. . . . . They seem to be plain, affable people. . . . . The ambassador is a venerable old gentleman, with a full head of perfectly white hair, looking not unlike an old-fashioned wig; and this, together with his collarless white neckcloth and his brown coat, gave him precisely such an aspect as one would expect in a respectable person of pre-revolutionary days.
I replied: "I believe that the men of the French Revolution were great, but not the ideas." Of all the philosophical literature of the pre-revolutionary period, what remains today? What books exert influence? In France, excerpts from Montesquieu, Diderot and Rousseau are still read in the schools, but outside of France, they are read nowhere.
"The ambassador is a venerable old gentleman, with a full head of perfectly white hair, looking not unlike an old-fashioned wig; and this, together with his collarless white neckcloth and his brown coat, gave him precisely such an aspect as one would expect in a respectable person of pre-revolutionary days.
At the back, they were sunny and airy; they looked through, overlapping a court-way, into Providence Square. It was a real old Boston homestead, of which so few remain. There were corner beams and wainscots, some tiled chimney-pieces, even. It made you think of the pre-Revolutionary days of tea-drinkings, before the tea was thrown overboard.
Out of this brief narrative of a great life, let each reader for himself deduce as he may, the inspiration and purpose, without which American citizenship is no better that some other. John Adams attempts to classify the pre-revolutionary orators of New England according to their ardor and influence.
It was curious to see how complete the revolution had been in a social sense. It was impossible to tell to what class in pre-revolutionary days any particular member of the audience had belonged. I was struck by the new smartness of the boy officers of the Red Army, of whom a fair number were present.
This was the ancient tap-room of the tavern, which had been built at that pre-Revolutionary time when the stuffed catamount, with its fangs and claws bared to the York State officers, crouched on top of the staff at Bennington for Polktown was one of the oldest settlements in these "Hampshire Grants."
One half shudders to think how primitive they were in the first ages, when the pools were used by the sexes alternately, and the skurrying nymphs hastened to retreat at the notification that their hour was out and that the gentlemen wanted to come in. They were populous and civilized in the pre-Revolutionary era when Washington began to frequent them and became part owner in the surrounding land.
It has been remarked that "from the time when Joliet and La Salle first found their way into the heart of the great West up to the present day when far-off Alaska is in the throes of development, 'big business' has been engaged in western speculation." * In pre-revolutionary days this speculation took the form of procuring, by grant or purchase, large tracts of western land which were to be sold and colonized at a profit.
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