THE FAMOUS RELIEF OF CLEOPATRA AT TEMPLE OF DENDERAH THE INSTINCT OF STEP-FATHERHOOD. A Novel. 16mo, Cloth, $1.25. A LITTLE SISTER TO THE WILDERNESS. A Novel. 16mo, Cloth, $1.25. THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF AN OLD MAID. 16mo, Cloth, $1.25. THE UNDER SIDE OF THINGS. 16mo, Cloth, $1.25. FROM A GIRL’S POINT OF VIEW. 16mo, Cloth, $1.25. TO THAT MOST INTERESTING SPECK OF HUMANITY, ALL PERPETUAL MOTION AND KINDLING INTELLIGENCE AND SWEETNESS UNSPEAKABLE, MY LITTLE NEPHEW BILLY ABSENCE FROM WHOM RACKED MY SPIR

The frank conceit of the title to this book will, I hope, not prejudice my friends against it, and will serve not only to excuse my being my own Boswell, but will fasten the blame of all inaccuracies, if such there be, upon the offender—myself. This is not a continuous narrative of a continuous journey, but covers two years of travel over some thirty thousand miles, and presents peoples and things, not as you saw them, perhaps, or as they really are, but only As Seen By Me....

In this day and generation, when everybody goes to Europe, it is difficult to discover the only person who never has been there. But I am that one, and therefore the stir it occasioned in the bosom of my amiable family when I announced that I, too, was about to join the vast majority, is not easy to imagine. But if you think that I at once became a person of importance it only goes to show that you do not know the family. My mother, to be sure, hovered around me the way she does when she thinks

People said to me, “What are you going to London for?” I said, “To get an English point of view.” “Very well,” said one of the knowing ones, who has lived abroad the larger part of his life, “then you must go to ‘The Insular,’ in Piccadilly. That is not only the smartest hotel in London, but it is the most typically British. The rooms are let from season to season to the best country families. There you will find yourself plunged headlong into English life with not an American environment to ble

It was a fortunate thing, after all, that I went to London first, and had my first great astonishment there. It broke Paris to me gently. For a month I have been in this city of limited republicanism; this extraordinary example of outward beauty and inward uncleanness; this bewildering cosmopolis of cheap luxuries and expensive necessities; this curious city of contradictions, where you might eat your breakfast from the streets—they are so clean—but where you must close your eyes to the spectacl

I am just able to sit up, and I couldn’t think of a thing I wanted to eat if I thought a week. I came on this yachting trip because my friends begged me to. They said it would be an experience for me. It has been. The Hela started out with a party of ten on board, who were on pleasure bent. We have come up the English Channel from Dinard to Ostend, but before we had been out an hour we struck a gale, to which veterans on seasickness will refer for many a long day as “that fearful time on the Cha

We met our first real discourtesy in Berlin at the hands of a German, and although he was only the manager of an hotel, we lay it up against him and cannot forgive him for it. It happened in this wise: My companion, being the courier, bought our tickets straight through to St. Petersburg, with the privilege of stopping a week in Vilna, where we were to be the guests of a Polish nobleman. When she sent the porter to check our trunks she told him in faultless German to check them only to Vilna on

It behooves one to be good in Russia, for no matter how excellent your reputation at home, no matter how long you have been a member in good and regular standing of the most orthodox church, no matter how innocent your heart may be of anarchy, nihilism, or murder, you travel, you rest, you eat, sleep, wake, or dream, tracked by the Russian police. They snatch your passport the moment you arrive at a hotel, and register you, and if you change your hotel every day, every day your passport is taken

Yesterday we had our first Russian experience in the shape of a troika ride. Russians, as a rule, do not troika except at night. In fact, from my experience, they reverse the established order of things and turn night into day. A troika is a superb affair. It makes the tiny sledges which take the place of cabs, and are used for all ordinary purposes, look even more like toys than usual. But the sledges are great fun, and so cheap that it is an extravagance to walk. A course costs only twenty kop

I thought St. Petersburg interesting, but it is modern compared to Moscow. Everything is so strange and curious here. The churches, the chimes, the palace, the coronation chapel, and the street scenes are enough to drive one mad with interest. Moscow is said to have sixteen hundred churches, and I really think we did not skip one. They are almost as magnificent as those in St. Petersburg, and they impressed—overpowered us, in fact, with the same unspeakable riches of the Greek Church. The name o

Constantinople had three different effects upon me. The first was to make me utterly despise it for its sickening dirt; the second was when I forgot all about the mud and garbage, and went crazy over its picturesque streets with their steep slopes, odd turns, and bewitching vistas, and the last was to make me dread Cairo for fear it would seem tame in comparison, for Constantinople is enchanting. If I were a painter I would never leave off painting its delights and spreading its fascinations bro

I need not have been afraid that the charms of Constantinople would spoil Cairo for me, although at first I was disappointed. Most places have to be lived up to, especially one like Cairo, whose attractions are vaunted by every tourist, every woman of fashion, every scholar, every idle club-man, everybody, either with brains or without. I wondered how it could be all things to all men. I simply thought it was the fashion to rave about it, and I was sick of the very sound of its name before I cam

In travelling abroad there are some things which you wish to do more than others. There are certain treasures you particularly desire to see, certain scenes your mind has pictured, until the dream has almost become a reality. The ascent of the Nile was one of my Meccas, and now that it is over the reality has almost become a dream. In Egypt the weather is so nearly perfect during the season that it was no surprise to find the day of our departure a cloudless one. I seldom worry myself to arrange

After our ship left Smyrna, where the camels are the finest in the world, and where the rugs set you crazy, we came across to the Piraeus, and arrived so late that very few of the passengers dared to land for fear the ship would sail without them. It was blowing a perfect gale, the sea was rough, and the captain too cross to tell us how long we would have on shore. I looked at my companion and she looked at me. In that one glance we decided that we would see the Acropolis or die in the attempt.

The point of view is always the pivot of recollection. How ought one to remember a place? There are a dozen ways of enjoying Naples, and twenty ways of being miserable in America. Or turn it the other way, it makes no difference. It depends upon one’s self and the state of the spleen. Before I came to Europe I remember often to have been disgusted with persons who recalled Germany by its beer and Spain by its fleas, or those who said: “Cologne! Oh yes; I remember we got such a good breakfast the

On Easter Sunday I had my first view of Rome, my first view of St. Peter’s. The day was as soft and mild as one of our own spring days, and there was even that little sharp tang in the air which one feels in the early spring in America. The wind was sweet and balmy, yet now and then it had a sharp edge to it as it cut around a curve, as if to remind one that the frost was not yet all out of the ground, and that the sun was still only the heir-apparent to the throne and had not yet been crowned k