portion of his very life, and to which
he returns from all his wayward fancies? He told me that he had played
in the Coliseum at Rome, in the Louvre at Paris, in Hyde-park at
London, and on the lake of Geneva,--and now, living in Europe, yet
always proudly conscious of being an American,--this causes--pardon me,
I only ask the question--does this not cause a restlessness of spirit,
which may be fatal to any growth?"

"I see," Sonnenkamp answered, leaning back his head, "you are an
incarnate, or one might rather say, an insouled German, who runs over
the whole world, in reality and in thought, and cajoles himself always
with the self-complacent notion, 'I am so whole-souled, and that is
more than the rest of you are.' Pah! I tell you that if I bestow
anything of worth upon my child, I believe it will be just this, that
he will be free from that sentimentality of a so-called settled home.
The whistle of the locomotive scares away all the homesickness so
tenderly pampered of old. We are in fact cosmopolites, and that is just
the greatness of American civilization, that, not being rooted in the
past, national limitations and rights of citizenship have no narrowing
influence upon the soul. The home-attachment is an old nuisance and a
prejudice. Roland is to become an untramelled man."

Eric was silent. After a considerable time, he said:--

"It is, perhaps, not beneficial, but tiresome, both to you and to me,
to deal in generalities. I would only say, that however little
calculated travelling may be to create an inner satisfaction, when
there is no definite object to be attained that one can all along hold
in view, much less can a life that has no special aim of action,
thought, or enjoyment, confer any central peace. If Roland now had some
special talent--"

"Do you find none at all in him?"

"I have discovered none as yet; and still it seems to me, that if he
had been born under different circumstances, he would have made a
serviceable lock-smith, or a good groom. I hope you do not
misunderstand that--I consider it a guaranty for human equality, that
what a man becomes, wholly or chiefly depends upon circumstances.
Hundreds of judges would have become, under different circumstances,
common laborers, and hundreds of common laborers would have become
judges. As I said before, it is to me a direct proof of the universally
diffused capacities of human beings, that only the few have the genius
that absolutely demands a s