He has no idea of defeat; he proposes to take the world by storm; he
half wonders that quiet people are not startled by his presence. He
brushes with an air of importance about the halls of country hotels; he
wears his honor at the public tables; he fancies that the inattentive
guests can have little idea that the young gentleman, who so recently
delighted the public ear with his dissertation on the "General Tendency
of Opinion," is actually among them, and quietly eating from the same
dish of beef and of pudding!
Our poor Clarence does not know--Heaven forbid he should!--that he is
but little wiser now than when he turned his back upon the old Academy,
with its gallipots and broken retorts; and that with the addition of a
few Greek roots, a smattering of Latin, and some readiness of speech, he
is almost as weak for breasting the strong current of life as when a
boy. America is but a poor place for the romantic book-dreamer. The
demands of this new, Western life of ours are practical and earnest.
Prompt action, and ready tact, are the weapons by which to meet it, and
subdue it. The education of the cloister offers at best only a sound
starting-point from which to leap into the tide.
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