t of pure fun mixed with the sport that is to refresh your
heart.

"A tour in Europe, carefully mapped out with an elaborate itinerary and
a carefully connected timetable, may be full of instruction, but it
often becomes a tax upon the spirit and a weariness to the flesh.
Compulsory castles and mandatory museums and required ruins pall upon
you, as you hurry from one to another, vaguely agitated by the fear
that you may miss something that is marked with a star in the
guide-book, and so be compelled to confess to your neighbour at the
_table-d'hote_ that you have failed to see what he promptly and
joyfully assures you is 'the best thing in the whole trip,' Delicate
and sensitive people have been killed by taking a vacation in that way.

"I remember meeting, several years ago, a party of personally conducted
tourists in Venice, at the hour which their itinerary consecrated to
the enjoyment of the fine arts in the gallery of the Academy. Their
personal conductor led them into one of the great rooms, and they
gathered close around him, with an air of determination on their tired
faces, listening to his brief, dry patter about the famous pictures
that the room contained. He stood in the centre of the room holding his
watch in his hand while they dispersed themselves around the walls,
looking for the paintings which they ought to see, like chickens
searching for scattered grains of corn. At the expiration of five
minutes he clapped his hands sharply; his flock scurried back to him;
and they moved on to 'do' the next room.

"I suppose that was one way of seeing Venice: but I would much rather
sit at a little table on the _Riva degli Schiavoni_, with a plate of
bread and cheese and a _mezzo_ of Chianti before me, watching the
motley crowd in the street and the many-coloured sails in the harbour;
or spend a lazy afternoon in a gondola, floating through watery
alley-ways that lead nowhere, and under the facades of beautiful
palaces whose names I did not even care to know. Of course I should
like to see a fine picture or a noble church, now and then; but only
one at a time, if you please; and that one I should wish to look at as
long as it said anything to me, and to revisit as often as it called
me."

"That is because you have no idea of the educational uses of a
vacation, Uncle Peter," said I. "You are an unsystematic person, an
incorrigible idler."

"I am," he answered, without a sign of penitence, "that is precisely
wh