INTRODUCTION.
WHEN I began the MS. of this book, it was with the intention of including it in the “Common Sense in the Household Series,” in which event it was to be entitled, “Familiar Talks from Afar.”
For reasons that seemed good to my publishers and to me, this purpose was not carried out, except as it has influenced the tone of the composition; given to each chapter the character of experiences remembered and recounted to a few friends by the fireside, rather than that of a sustained and formal narrative, penned in dignified seclusion, amid guide-books and written memoranda.
This is the truthful history of the foreign life of an American family whose main object in “going on a pilgrimage” was the restoration of health to one of its members. In seeking and finding the lost treasure, we found so much else which enriched us for all time, that, in the telling of it, I have been embarrassed by a plethora of materials. I have described some of the things we wanted to see—as we saw them,—writing con amore, but with such manifold strayings from the beaten track into by-paths and over moors, and in such homely, familiar phrase, that I foresee criticism from the disciples of routine and the sedate students of chronology, topography and general statistics. I comfort myself, under the prospective infliction, with the belief which has not played me false in days past,—to wit: that what I have enjoyed writing some may like to read. I add to this the hope that the fresh-hearted traveler who dares think and feel for, and of himself, in visiting the Old World which is to him the New, may find in this record of how we made it Home to us, practical and valuable hints for the guidance of his wanderings.
Springfield, Mass., April, 1880.