ey not in miles, but in
degrees, and sees the seasons change as the wild fowl sees them in his
annual flights; with huge leviathans always ready to take him on their
broad backs and push behind them with their pectoral or caudal fins the
waters that seam the continent or separate the hemispheres; heir of all
old civilizations, founder of that new one which, if all the prophecies
of the human heart are not lies, is to be the noblest, as it is the
last; isolated in space from the races that are governed by dynasties
whose divine right grows out of human wrong, yet knit into the most
absolute solidarity with mankind of all times and places by the one
great thought he inherits as his national birthright; free to form and
express his opinions on almost every subject, and assured that he will
soon acquire the last franchise which men withhold from man,--that
of stating the laws of his spiritual being and the beliefs he accepts
without hindrance except from clearer views of truth,--he seems to want
nothing for a large, wholesome, noble, beneficent life. In fact, the
chief danger is that he will think the whole planet is made for him,
and forget that there are some possibilities left in the debris of the
old-world civilization which deserve a certain respectful consideration
at his hands.

The combing and clipping of this shaggy wild continent are in some
measure done for him by those who have gone before. Society has
subdivided itself enough to have a place for every form of talent. Thus,
if a man show the least sign of ability as a sculptor or a painter, for
instance, he finds the means of education and a demand for his services.
Even a man who knows nothing but science will be provided for, if
he does not think it necessary to hang about his birthplace all his
days,--which is a most unAmerican weakness. The apron-strings of an
American mother are made of India-rubber. Her boy belongs where he is
wanted; and that young Marylander of ours spoke for all our young men,
when he said that his home was wherever the stars and stripes blew over
his head.

And that leads me to say a few words of this young gentleman, who
made that audacious movement lately which I chronicled in my last
record,--jumping over the seats of I don't know how many boarders to
put himself in the place which the Little Gentleman's absence had left
vacant at the side of Iris. When a young man is found habitually at the
side of any one given young lady,--when