gs. Numberless elements influence, move, form, and
expand whatever is in process of growth; man can bend and direct that
which is taking form and shape, but to affect the changes beyond this
stage is not in his power.

Eric brought three different influences to bear upon his pupil. They
continued to read Franklin's life; Roland was to see a whole man on
every side. The political career, which Franklin gradually entered
upon, was as yet not within the range of the youth's comprehension; but
he was to form some idea of such varied activity, and Eric knew, too,
that no one can estimate what may abide as a permanent possession in a
young soul, even from what is but partially understood. The White House
at Washington took rank in Roland's fancy with the Acropolis at Athens
and the Capitol at Rome; he often spoke of his ardent desire to go on a
pilgrimage thither.

It was hard to fix the youth's attention upon the establishment of the
American Republic and the formation of the Constitution, but he was
kept persistently to it.

Eric chose, for its deep insight, Bancroft's History of the United
States.

They read, at the same time, the life of Crassus by Plutarch, and also
Longfellow's Hiawatha. The impression of this poem was great, almost
overlaying all the rest; here the New World has its mythical and its
romantic age in the Indian legend, and it seems to be the work not of
one man, but of the spirit of a whole people. The planting of corn is
represented under a mythological form, as full of life as any which the
myth-creating power of antiquity can exhibit.

Hiawatha invents the sail, makes streams navigable, and banishes
disease; but Hiawatha's Fast, and the mood of exaltation and
self-forgetfulness consequent thereon, made upon Roland the deepest
impression.

"Man only is capable of that!" cried Roland.

"Capable of what?" asked Eric.

"Man only can fast, can voluntarily renounce food."

From this mythical world of the past, which must necessarily retire
before the bright day in the progress of civilization, they passed
again to the study of the first founding of the great American
Republic. Franklin again appeared here, and seemed to become the
central point for Roland, taking precedence even of Jefferson, who not
only proclaimed first the eternal and inalienable rights of man, but
made them the very foundation of a nation's life. Roland and Eric saw
together how this Crusoe-settlement on a large scale, as Fr