Baddeck and That Sort of Thing | Page 4

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BADDECK AND THAT SORT OF THING
By Charles Dudley Warner

PREFACE
TO JOSEPH H. TWICHELL
It would be unfair to hold you responsible for these light sketches of a
summer trip, which are now gathered into this little volume in response
to the usual demand in such cases; yet you cannot escape altogether.
For it was you who first taught me to say the name Baddeck; it was you
who showed me its position on the map, and a seductive letter from a
home missionary on Cape Breton Island, in relation to the abundance of
trout and salmon in his field of labor. That missionary, you may
remember, we never found, nor did we see his tackle; but I have no
reason to believe that he does not enjoy good fishing in the right season.
You understand the duties of a home missionary much better than I do,
and you know whether he would be likely to let a couple of strangers
into the best part of his preserve.
But I am free to admit that after our expedition was started you
speedily relieved yourself of all responsibility for it, and turned it over
to your comrade with a profound geographical indifference; you would
as readily have gone to Baddeck by Nova Zembla as by Nova Scotia.
The flight over the latter island was, you knew, however, no part of our
original plan, and you were not obliged to take any interest in it. You
know that our design was to slip rapidly down, by the back way of
Northumberland Sound, to the Bras d'Or, and spend a week fishing
there; and that the greater part of this journey here imperfectly
described is not really ours, but was put upon us by fate and by the
peculiar arrangement of provincial travel.
It would have been easy after our return to have made up from libraries
a most engaging description of the Provinces, mixing it with historical,
legendary, botanical, geographical, and ethnological information, and
seasoning it with adventure from your glowing imagination. But it
seemed to me that it would be a more honest contribution if our
account contained only what we saw, in our rapid travel; for I have a
theory that any addition to the great body of print, however
insignificant it may be, has a value in proportion to its originality and
individuality,--however slight either is,--and very little value if it is a
compilation of the observations of others. In this case I know how
slight the value is; and I can only hope that as the trip was very
entertaining to us, the record of it may not be wholly unentertaining to

those of like tastes.
Of one thing, my dear friend, I am certain: if the readers of this little
journey could have during its persual the companionship that the writer
had when it was made, they would think it altogether delightful. There
is no pleasure comparable to that of going about the world, in pleasant
weather, with a good comrade, if the mind is distracted neither by care,
nor ambition, nor the greed of gain. The delight there is in seeing things,
without any hope of pecuniary profit from them! We certainly enjoyed
that inward peace which the philosopher associates with the absence of
desire for money. For, as Plato says in the Phaedo, "whence come wars
and fightings and factions? whence but from the body and the lusts of
the body? For wars are occasioned by the love of money." So also are
the majority of the anxieties of life. We left these behind when we went
into the Provinces with no design of acquiring anything there. I hope it
may be my fortune to travel further with you in this fair world, under
similar circumstances.
NOOK FARM, HARTFORD, April 10, 1874.
C. D. W.

BADDECK AND THAT SORT OF THING
"Ay, now I am in Arden: the more fool I; when I was at home, I was in
a better place; but travellers must be content."-- TOUCHSTONE.
Two comrades and travelers, who sought a better country than the
United States in the month of August, found themselves one evening in
apparent possession of the ancient town of Boston.
The shops were closed at early candle-light; the fashionable inhabitants
had retired into the country, or into the second-story-back, of their
princely residences, and even an air of tender gloom settled upon the
Common. The streets were almost empty, and one passed into the burnt
district, where the scarred ruins and the uplifting piles of new brick and
stone spread abroad under the flooding light of a full moon like another
Pompeii, without any increase in his feeling of tranquil seclusion. Even
the news-offices had put up their shutters, and a confiding stranger
could