PREFACE

SOONERor later the average mortal must betempted in order to see whether or not hewill be found wanting. Naturally thesooner the ordeal is over, the better. Just nowit is a consuming desire to record my first impressionsabroad, to convince myself, if no oneelse in this cold and venal world, that while enjoyingthis privilege of foreign sights, I lived withmy eyes open, trying to see things intelligently andthoughtfully. Not enough of a travelled worldlingto be able to assimilate new impressions andviews of life, or to be modified by new surroundingswithout yielding to this temptation, I havehad recourse to the English language (as a vehicleto express my confusion of ideas), whose words arecheap and easy substitutes for thought. However,it is not written with the determination to give information,or to temper it with any sort of humoror guide-book instruction; but mitigated by actualknowledge of the places and things talked about.It may prove that I really think I can tell what Isaw, just as a color-blind man thinks he can pickout red or blue; but the color-blind man, be he everso teachable, can never know what he misses; andlikewise the writer, without a heaven-sent senseor birthright for book-making, never knows howineffective her narration of sights in book-formreally is. It may be equally obvious that thegift has not been cultivated with zeal or properlydirected; but whoever reads, I trust, will be bornwith the precious gift of sympathy.

It is amazing that one is not discouraged as theythink of the better utterances upon these same subjects,which have become so constant, so multiplied,diffused, reported, repeated, stereotyped, telegraphed,published, and circulated, that books, pamphlets,speeches and reviews and reports are things thatone tries to escape from. This effort will be characterizedby haste and superficiality, caused partlyby the lack of time and thought necessary to condense,or possibly a fear that its substance mightdisappear in a process of condensation. He whoruns may read. In that great day of reckoningthere will be charged to me so many golden hourslost between sunrise and sunset, for persistency inwriting monotonous emotions while crossing theAtlantic for the first time.

NEVER MIND