Explore "We Three" by Gouverneur Morris on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
We were at the beginning of those parlous times when the Democrats, having come into power upon a wave of impassioned idiocy and jealousy, were beginning to make us poor at home and despised abroad. A schoolmaster president, with three cabinet officers plucked by the hair from a Gilbert and Sullivan opera, had put a temporary end to all our best qualities as a nation, with the possible exception of the power to laugh at jokes.
It was a hectic winter in Aiken. Some of the richest members of the Aiken Club were in trouble. There was some talk of making two and a half cents a point bridge standard instead of five. Even my own father asked me to go a little light, if I could, and not be led into any foolishness. "I've not been hit yet," he said, "but you can't tell what the fools will do next. " You heard very few bets made. There was less drinking. It was as if certain men were going into training in order to be at their very best when the worst times should come.