The Lure of the Camera - Charles S. Olcott

BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
The Riverside Press Cambridge 1914

TO MY BOYS
GAGE, CHARLES, AND HOWARD
THIS BOOK IS AFFECTIONATELY
DEDICATED

PREFACE

The difference between a ramble and a journey is about the same as that between pleasure and business. When you go anywhere for a serious purpose, you make a journey; but if you go for pleasure (and don’t take the pleasure too seriously, as many do) you only ramble.

The sketches in this volume, which takes its name from the first chapter, are based upon “rambles,” which were for the most part merely incidental excursions, made possible by various “journeys” undertaken for more serious purposes. It has been the practice of the author for many years to carry a camera on his travels, so that, if chance should take him within easy distance of some place of literary, historic, or scenic interest, he might not miss the opportunity to pursue his favorite avocation.

If the reader is asked to make long flights, as from Scotland to Italy, then back, across the Atlantic, to New England, and thence overland to Wyoming and Arizona, he must remember that ramblers take no account of distance or direction. In this case they must take no account of time, for these rambles are but the chance happenings that have occurred at intervals in a period of more than a dozen years.

People who are in a hurry, and those who in traveling seek to “do” the largest number of places in the shortest number of days, are advised not to travel with an amateur photographer. Not only must he have leisure to find and study his subjects, but he is likely to wander away from the well-worn paths and use up his time in making inquiries, in a fashion quite exasperating to the tourist absorbed in his itinerary.