ndbook to the United States."
Readers uninterested in topics of so practical and commonplace a
character will do well to skip it altogether.

When the scheme of publishing a "Baedeker" to the United States was
originally entertained, the first thought was to invite an American to
write the book for us. On more mature deliberation it was, however,
decided that a member of our regular staff would, perhaps, do the work
equally well, inasmuch as he would combine, with actual experience in
the art of guidebook making, the stranger's point of view, and thus
the more acutely realise, by experiment in his own _corpus vile_, the
points on which the ignorant European would require advice, warning,
or assistance. So far as my own voice had aught to do with this
decision, I have to confess that I severely grudged the interesting
task to an outsider. The opportunity of making a somewhat extensive
survey of the country that stood preeminently for the modern ideas of
democracy and progress was a peculiarly grateful one; and I even
contrived to infuse (for my own consumption) a spice of the ideal into
the homely brew of the guidebook by reflecting that it would
contribute (so far as it went) to that mutual knowledge, intimacy of
which is perhaps all that is necessary to ensure true friendship
between the two great Anglo-Saxon powers.

While thus reserving the editing of the book for one of our own
household, we realised thoroughly that no approach to completeness
would be attainable without the cooeperation of the Americans
themselves; and I welcome this opportunity to reiterate my keen
appreciation of the open-handed and open-minded way in which this was
accorded. Besides the signed articles by men of letters and science in
the introductory part of the handbook, I have to acknowledge thousands
of other kindly offices and useful hints, many of which hardly allow
themselves to be classified or defined, but all of which had their
share in producing aught of good that the volume may contain. So many
Americans have used their Baedekers in Europe that I found troops of
ready-made sympathisers, who, half-interested, half-amused, at the
attempt to Baedekerise their own continent, knew pretty well what was
wanted, and were able to put me on the right track for procuring
information. Indeed, the book could hardly have been written but for
these innumerable streams of disinterested assistance, which enabled
the writer so to economise his time