[A TALK ABOUT TRAVELLING.]
BY CAROLINE B. LE ROW.
Of course every intelligent and ambitious American boy and girl wishes to go to Europe, and hopes to do so at some future time. The wish is a sensible one, for it shows an appreciation of the things to be seen abroad, and a desire to know more about them than can be learned by mere reading or study.
In the mean time, while "waiting for papa's ship to come in," you are going to school, busy with the conjugation of irregular French verbs and the pronunciation of "Ich," the location of Mont Blanc and the length of the River Rhine, the Elizabethan age of English literature and the poems of Wordsworth, the cause of the Thirty Years' War and the reason why Charles the First had his head cut off.
Sometimes all these things grow tiresome, and seem both needless and stupid, but in reality this school-time is giving you the best chance that you will ever have to prepare for that trip across the Atlantic of which you like to think and talk.
For such a trip needs preparation. It is true that you might enjoy everything to be seen abroad without knowing anything about it, as a child delights in the bright colors of a picture—just as well upside down as any other way. But no sensible person could be content with that, and to rely on guide-books, although they are necessary for much that can not be learned elsewhere, is like depending upon stilts or crutches for getting along in the world.
An English wit was once asked some simple question in history. "I don't know," he replied, with a wave of his hand. "You'll find it in some book. Books are made to keep such things in." But we can not carry a whole library around with us, even in the Handy Volume or Vest Pocket series. It is troublesome enough to carry a dictionary, and a small one at that. A great many things we can trust to books to keep for us, and go for them when they are wanted. You would not think of carrying a glue-pot on your arm or a bottle of arnica in your pocket all the time. You need them only once in a while, and know where to find them when you do. But your pencil and your handkerchief—these of course you want with you every hour of the day, wherever you may be. Your school-time is spent in selecting from books facts in history and geography, literature and science, and putting them safely away in your mental pockets.
Of course you read as well as study. What? The world is full of books which are as bright and sweet as sunshine and apple blossoms. There are good books which make you want to be noble and generous and heroic; wise books which teach you how great men and women have thought and worked, and what they have done for the good of the world in which they lived. Read the best books, and read for the best purpose, not simply to amuse yourselves, for you will get heartily tired of that after a while, nor to kill time, which is one of your best friends, but to take for your own possession the knowledge which the wisest of all men calls "more precious than rubies." When you start upon that dreamed-of and longed-for trip, you will be surprised to find how much the pleasure and profit of every mile of the way will be increased in exact proportion to the amount of what is well called "general information." Even the voyage is a different thing from what you imagine, and whether on sea or shore, you will find that ignorance is worse to carry about than a Saratoga trunk in a country which never checks baggage.
Last summer one of the Scotch steamers carried out a large number of young people, who quickly became acquainted, and were the best of friends.