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1Author:  Cox William d. 1851?Requires cookie*
 Title:  Crayon sketches  
 Published:  1997 
 Subjects:  University of Virginia Library, Modern English collection | UVA-LIB-Text | University of Virginia Library, Early American Fiction, 1789-1875 | UVA-LIB-EarlyAmFict1789-1875 
 Description: It is a wholesome thing to be what is commonly termed “kicked about the world.” Not literally “kicked”—not forcibly propelled by innumerable feet from village to village, from town to town, or from country to country, which can be neither wholesome nor agreeable; but knocked about, tossed about, irregularly jostled over the principal portions of the two hemispheres; sleeping hard and soft, living well when you can, and learning to take what is barely edible and potable ungrumblingly when there is no help for it. Certes, the departure from home and old usages is any thing but pleasant, especially at the outset. It is a sort of secondary “weaning” which the juvenile has to undergo; but like the first process, he is all the healthier and hardier when it is over. In this way, it is a wholesome thing to be tossed about the world. To form odd acquaintance in ships, on the decks of steam boats and tops of coaches; to pick up temporary companions on turnpikes or by hedge-sides; to see humanity in the rough, and learn what stuff life is made of in different places; to mark the shades and points of distinction in men, manners, customs, cookery, and other important matters as you stroll along. What an universal toleration it begets! How it improves and enlarges a man's physical and intellectual tastes and capacities! How diminutively local and ridiculously lilliputian seem his former experiences! He is now no longer bigotted to a doctrine or a dish, but can fall in with one, or eat of the other, however strange and foreign, with a facility that is truly comfortable and commendable: always, indeed, excepting, such doctrines as affect the feelings and sentiments, which he should ever keep “garner'd up” in his “heart of hearts;” and also, always excepting the swallowing of certain substances, so very peculiar in themselves, and so strictly national, that the undisciplined palate of the foreigner instinctively and utterly rejects them, such as the frog of your Frenchman— the garlic of your Spaniard—the compounds termed sausages of your Cockney—the haggis of your Scotchman—the train-oil of your Russian.
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