Page:Three Years in Europe.djvu/14

iv of these places are slipshod and careless, often penned in the saloon of a steamer or the smoking-room of a crowded hotel. These accounts have before now appeared in magazines and have been read, and I had my misgivings as to the expediency of republishing them in a permanent form.

"The request of friends" is pleaded as a justification for many works which had better not seen the light;—in my case, it was the request of my publisher! That enterprising gentleman has pressed me repeatedly to bring out my travels in Europe in a collected form. "But it is an old story now," I said, "many of my countrymen have travelled in Europe, and all know about Europe." "It may be an old story," he rejoined, "but none the less interesting to us."

A writer does not need many arguments to be convinced of the value of what he has written, and I was soon persuaded to yield to the better,—or at least to the more favourable judgment of my worthy publisher. To revise or rewrite what I had written eighteen or twenty years ago was out of the question, and indeed was scarcely the trouble; and thus the little book goes before the the public in a somewhat mixed and composite character! Extracts from letters written by a young and enthusiastic student will appear herein, side by side with the notes of an older and sadder, if