wits about me. Under the
circumstances, I simply could not afford to let what small powers of
observation I possess grow rusty, for, no matter what else might happen,
I had to turn my journey into some sort of readable "copy" afterwards.
If I know parts of Europe fairly well, I am indebted not to the
fashionable need of taking waters, not to following the approved routes
of travel, not to meeting my fellow countrymen in hotels as alike as two
peas no matter how different the capitals to which they belong, not to
any fatuous preference of another country to my own, but to the work
that brought us to England and the Continent and has kept us there, with
fresh commissions, ever since.

It was work that sent us from end to end of Great Britain and gave me my
knowledge of the land. As I look back to those remote days after our
arrival in Liverpool, I see J. and myself on an absurd, old-fashioned,
long-superannuated Rotary tandem tricycle riding along winding roads and
lanes, between the hedgerows and under the elms English prose and verse
had long since made familiar, in and out of little grey or red villages
clustered round the old church tower, passing through great towns of
many factories and high smoke-belching chimneys, halting for months
under the shadow of some old castle or cathedral that had been
appointed one of our stations by the way. Or I see us both trudging on
foot, knapsacks on our backs, climbing up and down the brown and purple
hills of the Highlands, circling the peaceful lochs, skirting the swift
mountain streams, tramping along the lonely roads of the far Hebrides:
summer after summer journeying to the beautiful places the usual tourist
in Britain journeys to for pleasure, but where we went because papers
and magazines at home, with a wisdom we applauded, had asked us to go
and make the drawings and write the articles by which we paid our way in
the world.

And it was work that sent us from end to end of France, and now in
looking back I see J. and myself on the neat, compact Humber
tandem,--then so new-fashioned, to-day as out-moded as the
Rotary,--riding along straight poplared roads, through well-ordered
forests and over wild hills, between vineyards, one year under the grey
skies of Flanders or among the lagoons of Picardy and another under the
brilliant sunshine of Provence or through the rich pastures of the sweet
Bourbonnais, in and out of ancient villages and towns as full of romance
as their