So he sent him off in a trading-ship, in the somewhat forlorn hope that a knowledge of the world would knock some of the devil out of him--a hope which, like many another, fell short of accomplishment.
The world knocks a good deal out of a man, but it also knocks a good deal in.

Tom came back from his voyaging knowing a good many things that he had not known when he started--a little English among others--and most of the others things which had been more profitably left unlearnt..