You may teach a
quadruped to walk on his hind legs, but he is always wanting to be on all
fours. Nothing that can be taught a growing youth is like the
atmospheric knowledge he breathes from his infancy upwards. The American
baby sucks in freedom with the milk of the breast at which he hangs.
--That's a good joke,--said the young fellow John,--considerin' it
commonly belongs to a female Paddy.
I thought--I will not be certain--that the Little Gentleman winked, as if
he had been hit somewhere--as I have no doubt Dr. Darwin did when the
wooden-spoon suggestion upset his theory about why, etc. If he winked,
however, he did not dodge.
A lively comment!--he said.--But Rome, in her great founder, sucked the
blood of empire out of the dugs of a brute, Sir! The Milesian wet-nurse
is only a convenient vessel through which the American infant gets the
life-blood of this virgin soil, Sir, that is making man over again, on
the sunset pattern! You don't think what we are doing and going to do
here. Why, Sir, while commentators are bothering themselves with
interpretation of prophecies, we have got the new heavens and the new
earth over us and under us! Was there ever anything in Italy, I should
like to know, like a Boston sunset?
--This time there was a laugh, and the little man himself almost smiled.
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