The Youthful Wanderer / An Account of a Tour through England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany and the Rhine, Switzerland, Italy, and Egypt, Adapted to the Wants of Young Americans Taking Their First Glimpses at the Old World

Geo. H. Heffner
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1876, by Geo. H. Heffner, In the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.
It had been fashionable among the ancients, for men of learning to visit distant countries and improve their education by traveling, after they had completed their various courses of study in literary institutions, and the same custom still prevails in Europe at the present time; but in our country, comparatively few avail themselves of this finishing course. It is not strange that this should have been so with a people who are separated from the rest of the world by such wide oceans as we are, which could, up to a comparatively recent period, only have been crossed at a sacrifice of much time and money, and at the risk of loosing either life or health. These difficulties have been greatly reduced by the application of steam-power to navigation, and the time has come when an American can make the tour of Europe with but little more expenditure of time and money than it costs even a native of Europe to do it.
One of my principal objects in writing this book is to encourage others to make similar tours. We would have plenty of books no traveling, if some of them did represent the readers in the humbler spheres of life, but the general impression in America is that no one can see Europe to any satisfaction in less than a year or two and with an outlay of from a thousand to two thousand dollars. This is a great mistake. If one travels for pleasure mainly, it will certainly require a great deal of time and money, but a hard-working student can do much in a few months. Permit me to say, that one will see and experience more in two weeks abroad, than many a learned man in America expects could be seen in a year. I sometimes give the particulars of sights and adventures in detail, that the reader may take an example of my experience, for any tour he may propose to make. The times devoted to different places are given that he may form an estimate of the comparative importance of different places.