Chapter 20 Failure (1871) Summary

Adams rents a room in an old house in Cambridge that had once belonged to an aunt on the Everett side of the family. His brother Brooks is living there as well. Adams is busy much of the time, trying to organize his lessons. As he is ignorant of the Middle Ages, he has to make it up as he goes along, teaching himself the subject, and learning how to be a professor, while educating the students. For him, "the only privilege a student had that was worth his claiming, was that of talking to the professor, and the professor was bound to encourage it." He teaches by historical method, a new technique, and has his students make a free investigation of the birth and evolution of Law in the Middle Ages. He does this in part because, not knowing how...