"I hope to do so. But the necessity of work must be recognized." Eric continued silent, and Sonnenkamp asked,—
"You have still another point?"
"Most certainly, and it is this. As I have already suggested, Roland must acquire a steadfast relation to external things, an intimate bond of union with them, as then only will he be at home in the world. He who has no recollections of childhood, no deep attachment to that which has transpired around him, is cut off from the very fountain-head of genial and hearty affection. Question yourself, and you will find—your return to Germany fully proves it—that the heartfelt, endearing recollections of childhood were the very sustenance, what one may perhaps call the spiritual mother's milk, of your deepest soul."
Sonnenkamp winced at these words, and Eric added,—
"Homelessness is hurting the soul of your son."
"Homelessness?" Sonnenkamp exclaimed in astonishment.
His face quivered for an instant, and his athletic strength seemed eager to make some outward demonstration, but he restrained it within the bounds of forced composure, asking,—
"Do I rightly apprehend you? Homelessness?"
"That is what I think. The inner life of the child needs training, that it may cling to something; a journey is, perhaps, not harmful to the soul of a child; at the best, it has little effect upon him. A child in travelling has no distinct impression from all the changes of the landscape; he takes delight in the locomotive at the station, and in the wind-mill on the hill. One fixed point in the soul anchors it firmly. I said that the human being ought to have an object to strive for, but permit me to add to that, that he must also have a fixed point of departure, and that is the home. You said, and I see it myself, that Roland takes no real delight in anything; and is not that owing to the fact that the boy is homeless, a child of hotels, with no tap-root in any place, and still more, no deep-seated impressions, no pictures in his memory which have become a 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."