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"Distinction no longer adheres either to the art of travel or that of letters. The common level for both sinks year by year. Especially where the two meet, in what is loosely called a book of travel, have the cheapness of journeys and the vulgarity of writing conspired to increasingly mediocre results. The existence of an intelligent minority undesirous of information, of description, careless of guidance, and impatient of dogma, comes more and more to be forgotten. It is to such an intelligent minority that this book is offered.
These pages do not lead to Westminster Abbey, nor to the Louvre; they profess no rivalry to the guide-books. The reader need not be afraid that either facts or dogmatic infliction of opinion will be forced upon him. Here are simply the impressions of one individual, a few random excursions with a whimsical temper.
We live, today, so much in a welter of facts and figures that each of us is in danger of losing the qualities of fancy and philosophy. We become almost unable to form our own peculiar judgments, assert our prejudices, think for ourselves. Yet I venture to declare that in personal expression whether about art or about travel lie not only such immediate savor, but such elixir of youth as never adhere to dogmatic decrees or in echoing the opinion of the majority." [...]
Reprint of the wonderful European travel description originally published in 1911.
