Poor country-boys of
Vermont and Connecticut formerly owed what knowledge they had to their
peddling-trips to the Southern States. California and the Pacific Coast
are now the university of this class, as Virginia was in old times. "To
have _some chance_" is their word. And the phrase, "to know the world,"
or to travel, is synonymous with all men's ideas of advantage and
superiority. No doubt, to a man of sense travel offers advantages. As
many languages as he has, as many friends, as many arts and trades,
so many times is he a man. A foreign country is a point of comparison
where-from to judge his own. One use of travel is, to recommend the
books and works of home; (we go to Europe to be Americanized;) and
another, to find men. For as Nature has put fruits apart in latitudes,
a new fruit in every degree, so knowledge and fine moral quality she
lodges in distant men. And thus, of the six or seven teachers whom each
man wants among his contemporaries, it often happens that one or two of
them live on the other side of the world.
Moreover, there is in every constitution a certain solstice, when the
stars stand still in our inward firmament, and when there is required
some foreign force, some diversion or alternative, to prevent
stagnation. And, as a medical remedy, travel seems one of the best. Just
as a man witnessing the admirable effect of ether to lull pain, and,
meditating on the contingencies of wounds, cancers, lockjaws, rejoices
in Dr.
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