own because they pass for nothing in the new places. For
the most part, only the light characters travel. Who are you that have
no task to keep you at home? I have been quoted as saying captious
things about travel; but I mean to do justice. I think there is a
restlessness in our people which argues want of character. All educated
Americans, first or last, go to Europe,--perhaps because it is their
mental home, as the invalid habits of this country might suggest. An
eminent teacher of girls said, "The idea of a girl's education is
whatever qualifies them for going to Europe." Can we never extract this
tape-worm of Europe from the brain of our country-men? One sees very
well what their fate must be. He that does not fill a place at home
cannot abroad. He only goes there to hide his insignificance in a larger
crowd. You do not think you will find anything there which you have
not seen at home? The stuff of all countries is just the same. Do you
suppose there is any country where they do not scald milkpans, and
swaddle the infants, and burn the brushwood, and broil the fish? What is
true anywhere is true everywhere. And let him go where he will, he can
find only so much beauty or worth as he carries.

Of course, for some men travel may be useful. Naturalists, discoverers,
and sailors are born. Some men are made for couriers, exchangers,
envoys, missionaries, bearers of despatches, as others are for farmers
and working-men. And if the man is of a light and social turn, and
Nature has aimed to make a legged and winged creature, framed for
locomotion, we must follow her hint, and furnish him with that breeding
which gives currency as sedulously as with that which gives worth. But
let us not be pedantic, but allow to travel its full effect. The boy
grown up on the farm which he has never left is said in the country to
have had _no chance_, and boys and men of that condition look upon work
on a railroad or drudgery in a city as opportunity. 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 ar