Loiterings in Pleasant Paths

[i]

[ii]

[iii]

INTRODUCTION.

WHEN I began the MS. of this book, it was withthe intention of including it in the “CommonSense in the Household Series,” in whichevent it was to be entitled, “Familiar Talks fromAfar.”

For reasons that seemed good to my publishers andto me, this purpose was not carried out, except as ithas influenced the tone of the composition; given toeach chapter the character of experiences rememberedand recounted to a few friends by the fireside, ratherthan that of a sustained and formal narrative, pennedin dignified seclusion, amid guide-books and writtenmemoranda.

This is the truthful history of the foreign life of anAmerican family whose main object in “going on apilgrimage” was the restoration of health to one of itsmembers. In seeking and finding the lost treasure, wefound so much else which enriched us for all time, that,in the telling of it, I have been embarrassed by a plethora[iv]of materials. I have described some of the thingswe wanted to see—as we saw them,—writing con amore,but with such manifold strayings from the beaten trackinto by-paths and over moors, and in such homely,familiar phrase, that I foresee criticism from the disciplesof routine and the sedate students of chronology,topography and general statistics. I comfort myself,under the prospective infliction, with the belief whichhas not played me false in days past,—to wit: thatwhat I have enjoyed writing some may like to read. Iadd to this the hope that the fresh-hearted traveler whodares think and feel for, and of himself, in visiting theOld World which is to him the New, may find in thisrecord of how we made it Home to us, practical andvaluable hints for the guidance of his wanderings.

Springfield, Mass., April, 1880.

[v]

CONTENTS.