Pound is still thinking about the early years of America as an independent country. The primary figure here is John Adams, which is an interesting choice because, let’s face it,  before McCullough produced that door stopper of a biography, no one gave a s–t about Adams (caveat: I have read that door stopper, a signed copy no less, and it’s a good book, but I’m not going to tell you that Adams was as important as all that, except for the basic fact of having been only our second president).

An interesting little tidbit – five pages into this Canto, Pound uses ‘@’ in place of ‘at’ in a sentence:

Mazzei:  little hope of success  @  so low an interest

While there is little else of interest, I always perk up at mentions of early coffeehouses:

Affaires  (Xmas day, Amsterdam)  still suspended
but stockjobbing goes on uninterruptedly
                   at coffee houses on Sundays and holidays
                   when it cannot be held upon  ‘change

As a simply historical fact, the first modern marker for stock trading (or stockjobbing, as it was, indeed, called) did truly begin in a coffeehouse.