Page:Our Neighbor-Mexico.djvu/21



T| is properly a path to the front door of a house, or at least a few steps ere its entrance is reached. So every voyage has a preliminary, a before-the-door-step experience. This is sometimes excluded entirely from the journal of the journey, sometimes inserted in the preface—a proper place for the preliminaries (a fore-talk best occurring at the fore-threshold), sometimes made into Chapter First. The latter course is here adopted, though every reader is at liberty to skip the chapter, leap over the threshold, and press instantly into the centre of the house, that is, the volume.

The nearest things are often the farthest off, the farthest off the nearest. This is true of places as well as of peoples. We know more of Bismarck than of our next-block neighbor, of Paris than of many an American town. This law is verified in our knowledge, or ignorance rather, of our nearest national neighbor, Mexico. Few books are written, less are read, upon the most novel land on our continent, and one of the most attractive on any continent. Prescott's "Conquest" is esteemed a sort of historical romance, the very charm of his style adding to the unreality of his theme. And if it be reckoned strict history, it is still history; not a living, breathing power, as is England or Italy, Germany or Russia, but