Page:The Presidents of the United States, 1789-1914, v. I.djvu/294

242 LIVES OF THE PRESIDENTS St. Petersburg to Paris with his mother by pri vate carriage, a difficult journey at that juncture, when the armies of the allies were returning, and being temporarily disbanded, after the abdication of Fontainebleau and immediately prior to Napo leon s return from Elba. His father at this time had just finished his service as one of the negotia tors of the Treaty of Ghent, between the United States and Great Britain. Immediately after that, and during the "Hundred Days," he was ap pointed Minister near the Court of St. James, and the boy, accompanying his parents to England, was, with his brothers, placed at a boarding school not far from London. This was immediately sub sequent to the war of 1812-1814, and the feeling be tween British and Americans was more bitter than ever before or, probably, since. Young Adams, a boy of nine, was compelled, in company with his two elder brothers, to accept the rough usage then common in English boarding schools, and to sus tain himself as best he might in any conflict, whether of wits or pugilism, which confronted him. The experience gave him an insight as respects English methods and characteristics which, as a diplomatist, stood him in good stead half a century later. Two years afterward, in 1818, returning with his parents to America, his father placed him in the Boston Latin school; subsequently he was graduated at Harvard college, class of 1825,