Elinor Wyllys Volume I Part 17

"What is your objection?"

"I doubt if it is at all an advantage to send most young men to Europe. I've seen so many come back conceited, and dissatisfied, and good-for-nothing, that I can't make up my mind to spoil Ben by the same process. He tries very hard to persuade me, that now-a-days, no doctor is fit to be trusted who has not finished off in Paris; but we managed without it thirty years ago."

"You must know much more than I do on that subject, doctor," said Hazlehurst, taking a seat on the other side of Elinor.

"Of course, I know more about the hospitals. But as I have never been abroad myself, I don't know what effect a sight of the Old World has on one. It seems to me it ruins a great many young fellows."

"And it improves a great many," said Hazlehurst.

"I am by no means so sure of that. It improves some, I grant you; but I think the chances are that it is an injury. We have happened to see a great deal, lately, of two young chaps, nephews of mine, who came home last spring. Three years ago they went abroad, sober, sensible, well-behaved lads enough, and now they have both come back, worse than good-for-nothing. There was Rockwell, he used to be a plain, straight-forward, smooth-faced fellow; and now he has come home bristling with whiskers, and beard, and moustaches, and a cut across the forehead, that he got in a duel in Berlin. Worse than all, his brain is so befogged, and mystified, that he can't see anything straight to save his life; and yet, forsooth, my gentleman is going to set the nation to rights with some new system of his own."

"I know nothing of the German Universities, doctor, from my own observation; but I should think it might be a dangerous thing to send a young man there unless he was well supplied with sound common sense of his own."

"Well, there is Bill Hartley, again, who staid all the time in Paris. He has come back a regular grumbler. If you would believe him, there is not a single thing worth having, from one end of the Union to the other. He is disgusted with everything, and only last night said that our climate wants fog! Now, I think it is much better to go plodding on at home, than to travel for the sake of bringing back such enlarged views as make yourself and your friends uncomfortable for the rest of your days."

"But it is a man's own fault, my dear sir, if he brings back more bad than good with him. The fact is, you will generally find the good a man brings home, in proportion to the good he took abroad."

"I'm not so sure of that. I used to think Rockwell was quite a promising young man at one time. But that is not the question.

If, after all, though it does sharpen a man's wits, it only makes him discontented for the rest of his life, I maintain that such a state of improvement is not to be desired. If things are really better and pleasanter in Europe, I don't want to know it. It would make me dissatisfied, unless I was to be a renegade, and give up the country I was born in; would you have a man do that?"

"Never!" said Harry. "I hold that it is a sort of desertion, to give up the post where Providence has placed us, unless in extreme cases; and I believe a man can live a more useful and more honourable life there than elsewhere. But I think travelling a very great advantage, nevertheless. The very power of comparison, of which you complain, is a source of great intellectual pleasure, and must be useful if properly employed, since it helps us to reach the truth."

The doctor shook his head. "I want you just to tell me how much of this grumbling and fault-finding is conceit, and how much is the natural consequence of travelling? Is everything really superior in Europe to what we have here?"

"Everything? No;" said Harry, laughing. But you would seem to think a man dissatisfied, doctor, if he did not, on the contrary, proclaim that everything is immeasurably better in this country than in any other on the globe. Now, confess, is not that your standard of patriotism?"

"Ah, you are shifting your ground, young gentleman. But we shall bring you to the point presently. Now tell us honestly, were you not disappointed with the looks of things when you came back?"

"If by disappointed, you mean that many things as I see them now, strike me as very inferior to objects of the same description in Europe, I do not scruple to say they do. When I landed, I said to myself,

"'The streets are narrow and the buildings mean; Did I, or fancy, have them broad and clean?'"

{George Crabbe (English poet, 1754-1832), "Posthumous Tales: Tale VI--The Farewell and Return", Part II, lines 79-80}

"I feared so!" and the doctor looked much as a pious Mahometan might be supposed to do, if he were to see a Frank seize the Grand Turk by the beard. "I should have thought better of you,"

he added.

{"Frank" = a European Christian; "Grand Turk" = Ottoman Emperor}

"My dear sir," said Harry, laughing, "how could I help it! I must defend myself from any desire to be disappointed, I a.s.sure you.

On the contrary, I wish very sincerely that everything in my native country were as good as possible in its way; that the architecture of the public buildings were of the n.o.blest kind; the private houses the most pleasant and convenient; the streets the best paved, and best lighted in the world. But I don't conceive that the way to bring this about is to maintain le pistolet a la gorge, that perfection has already been attained in all these particulars. To speak frankly, it strikes me as the height of puerility to wish to deceive oneself upon such subjects. On the contrary, I think it is the duty of every man, so far as he has the opportunity, to aim at correct notions on everything within his reach."

{"le pistolet a la gorge" = the pistol to the throat (French)}

"Well," remarked the doctor, "you only confirm me in my opinion.

I shall be more unwilling than ever to let Ben go; since even you, Harry Hazlehurst, who are a good deal better than most young men, confess the harm travelling has done you."

"But, my dear sir, I confess no such thing. I'm conscious that travelling has been a great benefit to me in many ways. I shall be a happier and better man for what I have seen, all my life, I trust, since many of my opinions are built on a better foundation than they were before."

"If I were you, I would not let him say so, Miss Elinor. His friends won't like to hear it; and I, for one, am very sorry that you are not as good an American as I took you for."

"It is quite a new idea to me, doctor," said Hazlehurst, "that mental blindness and vanity are necessary parts of the American character. We, who claim to be so enlightened! I should be sorry to be convinced that your view is correct. I have always believed that true patriotism consisted in serving one's country, not in serving oneself by flattering one's countrymen. I must give my testimony on these subjects, when called for, as well as on any other, honestly, and to the best of my ability."

"Do you know, doctor," said Elinor, "poor Harry has had to fight several battles on this subject already. Mrs. Bernard attacked him the other evening, because he said the mountains in Switzerland were higher than the White Mountains. Now we have only to look in a geography to see that they are so."

"But one don't like to hear such things, Miss Elinor."

"Mrs. Bernard asked him if he had seen anything finer than the White Mountains; what could he say! It seems to me just as possible for a man to love his country, and see faults in it, as it does for him to love his wife and children, without believing them to be the most perfect specimens of the human family, in body and mind, that ever existed. You will allow that a man may be a very good and kind husband and father, without maintaining everywhere that his wife and daughters surpa.s.s all their s.e.x, in every possible particular?"

"You will not, surely, deny, doctor," said Hazlehurst, "that it is reasonable to suppose that Europe possesses some advantages of an advanced state of civilization, that we have not yet attained to? We have done much for a young people, but we have the means of doing much more; and it will be our own fault if we don't improve."

"We shall improve, I dare say."

"Do you expect us to go beyond perfection, then?"

"I can't see the use of talking about disagreeable subjects."

"But even the most disagreeable truths have their uses."

"That may be; and yet I believe you would have been happier if you had staid at home. While he was away from you, Miss Elinor, I am afraid he learned some of those disagreeable truths which it would have been better for him not to have discovered."

Harry stooped to pick up a glove, and remained silent for a moment.

Shortly after, supper was announced; and, although the coachman was not quite as much at home in the pantry as in the stable, yet everything was very successfully managed.

"It is really mortifying to hear a man like Dr. Van Horne, fancy it patriotic to foster conceited ignorance and childish vanity, on all national subjects," exclaimed Harry, as he took his seat in the carriage, after handing the ladies in. "And that is not the worst of it; for, of course, if respectable, independent men talk in that tone, there will be no end to the fulsome, nauseating, vulgar flatteries that will be poured upon us by those whose interest it is to flatter!"

"I heard part of your conversation, and, I must confess, the doctor did not show his usual good sense," observed Miss Agnes.

"You are really quite indignant against the doctor," said Elinor.

"Not only against him, but against all who are willing, like him, to encourage such a miserable perversion of truth. Believe them, and you make patriotism anything, and everything, but a virtue."

CHAPTER XIII.

"Why, how now, count? Wherefore are you so sad?"

SHAKSPEARE. {sic--this is the Cooper family's usual spelling of the name}

{William Shakespeare, "Much Ado About Nothing", II.i.289}

"WELL, Jenny, you are going to leave us to-day, it seems," said Mr. Wyllys, the next morning, at breakfast. "I am sorry for it; but, I suppose your mother has a better right to you than we have."

"I promised mamma I would not stay after to-day, sir. Aunt Agnes is to carry me over to Longbridge, before dinner."

"You must come back again, as often as you can, child. It always seems to me, that Harry and you belong here, as much as you do anywhere else. How long do you suppose your mother will stay at Longbridge?"