dame de Stael's line on perfect happiness:
"To be young! to be in love! to be in Italy!"

Do people enjoy Europe as much now? I doubt it! It has become too much
a matter of course, a necessary part of the routine of life. Much of the
bloom is brushed from foreign scenes by descriptive books and
photographs, that St. Mark's or Mt. Blanc has become as familiar to a
child's eye as the house he lives in, and in consequence the reality now
instead of being a revelation is often a disappointment.

In my youth, it was still an event to cross. I remember my first voyage
on the old side-wheeled _Scotia_, and Captain Judkins in a wheeled chair,
and a perpetual bad temper, being pushed about the deck; and our delight,
when the inevitable female asking him (three days out) how far we were
from land, got the answer "about a mile!"

"Indeed! How interesting! In which direction?"

"In that direction, madam," shouted the captain, pointing downward as he
turned his back to her.

If I remember, we were then thirteen days getting to Liverpool, and made
the acquaintance on board of the people with whom we travelled during
most of that winter. Imagine anyone now making an acquaintance on board
a steamer! In those simple days people depended on the friendships made
at summer hotels or boarding-houses for their visiting list. At present,
when a girl comes out, her mother presents her to everybody she will be
likely to know if she were to live a century. In the seventies, ladies
cheerfully shared their state-rooms with women they did not know, and
often became friends in consequence; but now, unless a certain deck-suite
can be secured, with bath and sitting-room, on one or two particular
"steamers," the great lady is in despair. Yet our mothers were quite as
refined as the present generation, only they took life simply, as they
found it.

Children are now taken abroad so young, that before they have reached an
age to appreciate what they see, Europe has become to them a twice-told
tale. So true is this, that a receipt for making children good Americans
is to bring them up abroad. Once they get back here it is hard to entice
them away again.

With each improvement in the speed of our steamers, something of the
glamour of Europe vanishes. The crowds that yearly rush across see and
appreciate less in a lifetime than our parents did in their one tour
abroad. A good lady of my acquaintance was complaining recently how much
Pa