"I was surprised to learn, from what you said last evening, that Harry had passed a good deal of time in Europe."
The Doctor turned upon me briskly. Perhaps my tone may have implied that I was sorry to learn it.
"He has lost nothing by that. He has lost nothing by it, but that fixed stamp of place and time that most men wear. Though I don't know whether he would have had it at any rate: he was always himself. You have seen some shallow fellow who has been spoiled for living at home by a few years of sauntering and lounging about Europe. But rely on it, he who comes back a coxcomb went out one. Never fear! Harry is as good an American as if he had not been away,—and better. Living abroad, he has had the simplicity to study the history of his own country as carefully as if it had been a foreign one, not aware that it is with us no necessary part of a polite education. As for its institutions, he has an enthusiasm for them that I could almost envy him while it lasts, though I know he has got to be cured of it."
"How long was he abroad?"
"More than seven years."
"Was he with his parents all the time?"
"They were near him. His home was always within reach. But he was for several years at a large school in Paris, and again at one in Germany. At sixteen he had done with school and took his education into his own hands. He lived at home, but his parents did not meddle with him, except to aid him to carry out his plans. It was a course that would not answer with every young man, perhaps; but I don't know that any other would have done with him. He is one to cut out his own path. He chose not only his own studies, but, to a great extent, his own acquaintances; took journeys when he pleased and as he pleased. Wherever he was, with whomever, he always held his own walk straight and firm. You would not think that boy had seen so much of the world?"
"I could have thought he had been carefully guarded from it, and shielded almost from the very knowledge of wrong."
"He has never been kept out of danger of any kind; but it seems there was none anywhere for him. He is now, as you say, just as much a simple, innocent boy as if he were nothing more."
"His wings are grown, and shed off evil as the birds' do rain."