Explore "The Education of Henry Adams" by Henry Adams on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
The tramp in Thüringen lasted four-and-twenty hours. By the end of the first walk, his three companions -- John Bancroft, James J. Higginson, and B. W. Crowninshield, all Boston and Harvard College like himself -- were satisfied with what they had seen, and when they sat down to rest on the spot where Goethe had written --
"Warte nur! balde / Rubest du auch! " -- the profoundness of the thought and the wisdom of the advice affected them so strongly that they hired a wagon and drove to Weimar the same night. They were all quite happy and lighthearted in the first fresh breath of leafless spring, and the beer was better than at Berlin, but they were all equally in doubt why they had come to Germany, and not one of them could say why they stayed. Adams stayed because he did not want to go home, and he had fears that his father's patience might be exhausted if he asked to waste time elsewhere.