Although we did not tour together, you and I, there is none other than yourself to whom I could so ardently desire this book to be inscribed—this by reason of a certain happening at Looe, and not at all for the sake of anything you may find in these pages, saving indeed that the moiety of them is concerned with your county of Cornwall.
I have wrought upon this work for many months, in storm and shine; and always, when this crowded hive was most dreary, the sapphire seas, the bland airs, the wild moors of that western land have presented themselves to memory, and at the same time have both cheered and filled with regrets one who works indeed amid the shoutings and the tumults of the streets, but whose wish is for the country-side. You reside in mitigated rusticity; I, in expiation of some sin committed, possibly, in by-past cycles and previous incarnations, in midst of these roaring millions; and truly I love not so much company.
Yours very faithfully,
CHARLES G. HARPER.
PREFACE
Before I set about the overhauling of my notes made on this tour—afoot, afloat, awheel—from London to Land’s End, I confided to an old friend my intention of publishing an account of these wanderings. Now, no one has such a mean idea of one’s capacities as an old friend, and so I was by no means surprised when he flouted my project. I have known the man for many years; and as the depth of an old friend’s scorn deepens with time, you may guess how profound by now is his distrust of my powers.
“Better hadn’t,” said he.
“And why not?” said I.
“See how often it has been done,” he replied. “Why should you do it again, after Elihu Burritt, after Walter White, and L’Estrange, and those others who have wearied us so often with their dull records of uneventful days?”