ly to
such a state of affairs, must not be held, however, entirely responsible.
Underlying our civilization and culture, there is still strong in us a
wild nomadic strain inherited from a thousand generations of wandering
ancestors, which breaks out so soon as man is freed from the restraint
incumbent on bread-winning for his family. The moment there is wealth or
even a modest income insured, comes the inclination to cut loose from the
dull routine of business and duty, returning instinctively to the
migratory habits of primitive man.

We are not the only nation that has given itself up to globe-trotting; it
is strong in the English, in spite of their conservative education, and
it is surprising to see the number of formerly stay-at-home French and
Germans one meets wandering in foreign lands.

In 1855, a Londoner advertised the plan he had conceived of taking some
people over to visit the International Exhibition in Paris. For a fixed
sum paid in advance he offered to provide everything and act as courier
to the party, and succeeded with the greatest difficulty in getting
together ten people. From this modest beginning has grown the vast
undertaking that to-day covers the globe with tourists, from the frozen
seas where they "do" the midnight sun, to the deserts three thousand
miles up the Nile.

As I was returning a couple of years ago _via_ Vienna from
Constantinople, the train was filled with a party of our compatriots
conducted by an agency of this kind--simple people of small means who,
twenty years ago, would as soon have thought of leaving their homes for a
trip in the East as they would of starting off in balloons en route for
the inter-stellar spaces.

I doubted at the time as to the amount of information and appreciation
they brought to bear on their travels, so I took occasion to draw one of
the thin, unsmiling women into conversation, asking her where they
intended stopping next.

"At Buda-Pesth," she answered. I said in some amusement:

"But that was Buda-Pesth we visited so carefully yesterday."

"Oh, was it," she replied, without any visible change on her face, "I
thought we had not got there yet." Apparently it was enough for her to
be travelling; the rest was of little importance. Later in the day, when
asked if she had visited a certain old city in Germany, she told me she
had but would never go there again: "They gave us such poor coffee at the
hotel." Again later in speaking to her hus