More on John Hay by Henry Adams and a photo of The Fells (1 of 2)

The Fells, summer home of John Hay

While in New Hampshire, I had the chance to visit The Fells, the summer home of three generations of the Hay family, starting with the great statesman, John Hay.

John Hay was as strange to the Mississippi River as though he had not been bred on its shores, and the city of St. Louis had turned its back on the noblest work of nature, leaving it bankrupt between its own banks. The new American showed his parentage proudly; he was the child of steam and the brother of the dynamo, and already, within less than thirty years, this mass of mixed humanities, brought together by steam, was squeezed and welded into approach to shape; a product of so much mechanical power, and bearing no distinctive marks but that of its pressure. The new American, like the new European, was the servant of the powerhouse, as the European of the twelfth century was the servant of the Church, and the features would follow the parentage. - The Education of Henry Adams by Henry Adams