Gala-Days | Page 4

your feet before you accept their apology. That is
not magnanimous. Let mercy temper justice. It is a hard thing at best
for human nature to go down into the Valley of Humiliation; and
although, when circumstances arise which make it the only fit place for
a person, I insist upon his going, still no sooner does he actually begin
the descent than my sense of justice is appeased, my natural sweetness
of disposition resumes sway, and I trip along by his side chatting as
gaily as if I did not perceive it was the Valley of Humiliation at all, but
fancied it the Delectable Mountains. So, upon the first symptoms of
placability, I answered cordially,--
"Halicarnassus, it has been the ambition of my life to write a book of
travels. But to write a book of travels, one must first have travelled."

"Not at all," he responded. "With an atlas and an encyclopaedia one can
travel around the world in his arm-chair."
"But one cannot have personal adventures," I said. "You can, indeed,
sit in your arm-chair and describe the crater of Vesuvius; but you
cannot tumble into the crater of Vesuvius from your arm-chair."
"I have never heard that it was necessary to tumble in, in order to have
a good view of the mountain."
"But it s necessary to do it, if one would make a readable book."
"Then I should let the book slide,--rather than slide myself."
"If you would do me the honor to listen," I said, scornful of his paltry
attempt at wit, "you would see that the book is the object of my
travelling. I travel to write. I do not write because I have travelled. I am
not going to subordinate my book to my adventures. My adventures are
going to be arranged beforehand with a view to my book."
"A most original way of getting up a book!"
"Not in the least. It is the most common thing in the world. Look at our
dear British cousins."
"And see them make guys of themselves. They visit a magnificent
country that is trying the experiment of the world, and write about their
shaving-soap and their babies' nurses."
"Just where they are right. Just why I like the race, from Trollope down.
They give you something to take hold of. I tell you, Halicarnassus, it is
the personality of the writer, and not the nature of the scenery or of the
institutions, that makes the interest. It stands to reason. If it were not so,
one book would be all that ever need be written, and that book would
be a census report. For a republic is a republic, and Niagara is Niagara
forever; but tell how you stood on the chain-bridge at Niagara--if there
is one there--and bought a cake of shaving-soap from a tribe of Indians
at a fabulous price, or how your baby jumped from the arms of the

careless nurse into the Falls, and immediately your own individuality is
thrown around the scenery, and it acquires a human interest. It is
always five miles from one place to another, but that is mere almanac
and statistics. Let a poet walk the five miles, and narrate his experience
with birds and bees and flowers and grasses and water and sky, and it
becomes literature. And let me tell you further, sir, a book of travels is
just as interesting as the person who writes it is interesting. It is not the
countries, but the persons, that are 'shown up.' You go to France and
write a dull book. I go to France and write a lively book. But France is
the same. The difference is in ourselves."
Halicarnassus glowered at me. I think I am not using strained or
extravagant language when I say that he glowered at me. Then he
growled out,--
"So your book of travels is just to put yourself into pickle."
"Say, rather," I answered, with sweet humility,--"say, rather, it is to
shrine myself in amber. As the insignificant fly, encompassed with
molten glory, passes into a crystallized immortality, his own littleness
uplifted into loveliness by the beauty in which he is imprisoned, so I,
wrapped around by the glory of my land, may find myself niched into a
fame which my unattended and naked merit could never have claimed."
Halicarnassus was a little stunned, but presently recovering himself,
suggested that I had travelled enough already to make out a quite
sizable book.
"Travelled!" I said, looking him steadily in the face,-- "travelled! I went
once up to Tudiz huckleberrying; and once, when there was a freshet,
you took a superannuated broom and paddled me around the orchard in
a leaky pig's-trough!"
He could not deny it; so he laughed, and said,--
"Ah, well!--ah, well! Suit yourself. Take