the rest of the story. He sat alone. In the front room of his home, he sat alone, anxiously
ringing his hands. And it was a curious state of simultaneous agitation and depression which
plagued him as though he were grieving the loss of something, and at times he could almost stand
apart from his confusion and wonder at it dispassionately. Americans meet John, 62-year-old executive
John. At the beginning of his career, he had a most positive mental attitude. His optimism was
once described as virtually childlike, but no more. Colleagues had been aware of the gradual change
in his behavior over the years, the increasing irritability, the more frequent flashes of temper,
the mounting tendency to speak candidly when he should not have. Is it any wonder then that
eventually many of these same colleagues sought to betray him? Oh, John had been warned often
and out yet at times he seemed oddly resigned to the fact that he'd brought it all upon himself,
that he had almost cheerfully rendered himself ineffectual in his work. So there he sat,
ringing his hands in the front room of his summer home. Each year he returned to that house,
would stay for three months or more, never went into work. Friends would ask if he were not concerned
about his professional responsibilities, and he would answer that he'd keep an eye on business
from his summer home, but not this one summer. This one summer he sat and threaded,
pretending that business would somehow keep an eye on itself, practically oblivious to the outside world.
Actually, there was much to contribute to John's dismal mood, a number of family problems to begin with.
His son Charles had been wiped out financially. His wife Abby was ill terribly ill.
At one point John thought that he had lost her, and then there was John's
aggravating personal health problems, among them a chronic periodontal disease,
from which he derived nothing but constant discomfort.
And this all the while realizing that competitors were plotting against him.
And so it's understandable that panic set in. He had long hours, he would brewed a loan,
visitors would find him morose, suspicious, even openly abusive.
He wanted desperately to resign his position. He even begged other people to take over his job,
and yet deep down John had to know that that could not be. Anyway, history would never have forgiven him.
I said history would never have forgiven him.
It was bad enough that during the long summer of 1798, when our nation faced a multitude of crises,
among them war, one man largely unaware of the tribulation at hand, one man was playing
hooky from the biggest, most important job in the land. For John was John Adams.
And John Adams was the second president of the United States.
Now you know the rest of the story.