DEPARTMENT OF NON ESSENTIAL TRAVEL |
| DIRECTOR Floridia Crews |
ABOUT
Georgo had taken great pains to convince his guardian that it was perfectly necessary for him to 'travel, after tho completion of his studies. " I cannot conceive what the good of it would be," said the miller. " It is all very well for an artisan, that is, a shoemaker or a carpenter, to travel, in order to see some now fashion, or some new method of carrying on his work, or to meet with some moro suitablo wood or better leather, which he may turn to account when he comes home again. But illnesses, on tho other hand, are the same everywhere, and one can learn to cure them at the university first, aud afterwards by experience. If, for example, a man breaks his leg in Berlin, it must be set in exactly the same way as if it had been broken in my will; the only difference would be that one doctor or surgeon would be more skilful than another, and that wonld not bo the result of travelling. Our old barber opposite, Manser, sets legs hotter than any one, even when he has had a drop too much; and he has never been ont of the place."
" But the internal diseases, such as fever and the like, often appear in other places under different forms," said George, impatiently.
" That will not signify to you," said the miller j " for, supposing that a nervous fever were different in Paris from what it is here, what good will that be to you, seeing that you have to cure fevers in your own country, and not in Paris P"
But at last the miller was persuaded, and consented to allow 300 gulden (about £25) for the journey ; " quite a fortune," with which he thought one might travel to the end of the world. He could never be made to understand that that sum would only suffice for two months in Vienna: he had travelled in his day, and that by no means shabbily.
After his return, George wished to try his fortune as doctor in some little town. " As soon as you can earn your own living, or, as a free man, you can lay by two hundred gulden of your income a year, she shall be If a mnn wishes to live comfortably in his own ho must be sure that ho can maintain his wife. You will not throw away what my child brings with her, and you will be glad enough of it; but I must first know that you can support her without my help."
Mary was not like a great heiress in this matter. It did not occur to her to put a high value on herself, because she had a largo dowry. George stood so high in her eyes that his love seemed most wonderful happiness, and all that she could offer appeared small in comparison with it.
The miller would have preferred that George should try his fortune as doctor in the nearest town. Family love, in the country, although perfectly devoid of sentiment, possesses something of the nature of plants; it can bear no rending asunder. From the same house where the roughest words of abuse havo been heard, the most pitiful lamentation will arise when the daughter and her bridegroom settle more than six miles off.