Upon arriving home he noted that his barnyard was full of seaweed, which then prompted a characteristically indiscreet observation: He had made “a good exchange … honors and virtues for manure.” When a violent storm struck on the day of his return, he took it as a providential sign that trouble was following him into retirement, as he put it, “substituting fermentations in the elements for revolutions in the moral, intellectual and political world.” As one who had helped to make those political revolutions happen, he claimed to be completely comfortable in stormy weather. But now, at the advanced age of sixty-six, was it not natural to expect some semblance of serenity? “Far removed from all the intrigues, and now out of reach of all the great and little passions that agitate the world,” he explained, “I hope to enjoy more tranquillity than has ever before been my lot.”1The trouble with Adams was not that storms seemed to follow him, but rather that he carried them inside his soul wherever he went.
