“ Nothing that can be taught a growing youth is like the atmospheric knowledge he breathes from his infancy upwards. ”
 Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., The Professor at the Breakfast-Table (1860). copy citation

add

“The same idea in the soul of an Englishman who struggled up to it and still holds it antagonistically, and in the soul of an American to whom it is congenital and spontaneous, and often unrecognized, except as an element blended with all his thoughts, a natural movement, like the drawing of his breath or the beating of his heart, is a very different thing. You may teach a quadruped to walk on his hind legs, but he is always wanting to be on all fours. Nothing that can be taught a growing youth is like the atmospheric knowledge he breathes from his infancy upwards. The American baby sucks in freedom with the milk of the breast at which he hangs. —That's a good joke,—said the young fellow John,—considerin' it commonly belongs to a female Paddy. I thought—I will not be certain—that the Little Gentleman winked, as if he had been hit somewhere—as I have no doubt Dr.” source