Page:Three Years in Europe.djvu/201

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NORWAY AND SWEDEN.
165

if he can. Travelling opens up our mind, broadens our ideas, enlarges our sympathies, and makes us better fitted to receive new impressions and new incentives to work. For us, who are born and educated in India, it is also of incalculable advantage to see with our own eyes and to study with care the results of modern civilization in Europe and America, and to assimilate what is good in them with our own national progress. And if yet another plea for travelling was necessary, the pleasure of seeing the varied sceneries of the earth in various parts, and the interest one derives in examining the customs and manners of different races and nations would afford a sufficient plea. Why should we, by a senseless and self-imposed disability, preclude ourselves from one of the greatest sources of instruction and pleasure, when all the world around us benefits by it?

I will speak of only one more American party. It was a family party including a young lady who was the affianced bride of a young man who was also travelling with the party. The young lady was open and candid in her manners, often loud in her conversation. Judged by the English standard her ways would scarcely be styled polished, and yet I do not know why that somewhat artificial standard should be applied universally, and why people capable of more joyousness should not openly and candidly enjoy themselves in their own way. However, I am not going to set up as a writer on manners. It is enough to state that I found them extremely nice people at heart. They were open and