The first youth is the common country-boy, whose race has been bred to
bodily labor. Nature has adapted the family organization to the kind of
life it has lived. The hands and feet by constant use have got more than
their share of development,--the organs of thought and expression less
than their share. The finer instincts are latent and must be developed.
A youth of this kind is raw material in its first stage of elaboration.
You must not expect too much of any such. Many of them have force of
will and character, and become distinguished in practical life; but very
few of them ever become great scholars. A scholar is almost always the
son of scholars or scholarly persons.
That is exactly what the other young man is. He comes of the _Brahmin
caste of New England_. This is the harmless, inoffensive, untitled
aristocracy to which I have referred, and which I am sure you will
at once acknowledge. There are races of scholars among us, in which
aptitude for learning, and all these marks of it I have spoken of,
are congenital and hereditary. Their names are always on some college
catalogue or other. They break out every generation or two in some
learned labor which calls them up after they seem to have died out.
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