The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Youthful Wanderer, by George H. Heffner

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Title: The Youthful Wanderer
An Account of a Tour through England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany

Author: George H. Heffner

Release Date: January 8, 2004 [EBook #10638]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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[Illustration: Signed:--Geo. H. Heffner]

The Youthful Wanderer;

or An Account of a Tour through England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany
and the Rhine, Switzerland, Italy, and Egypt

Adapted to the Wants of Young Americans Taking Their First Glimpses at the
Old World

by

Geo. H. Heffner.

1876.

Preface.

It had been fashionable among the ancients, for men of learning to visit
distant countries and improve their education by traveling, after they had
completed their various courses of study in literary institutions, and the
same custom still prevails in Europe at the present time; but in our
country, comparatively few avail themselves of this finishing course. It
is not strange that this should have been so with a people who are
separated from the rest of the world by such wide oceans as we are, which
could, up to a comparatively recent period, only have been crossed at a
sacrifice of much time and money, and at the risk of loosing either life
or health. These difficulties have been greatly reduced by the application
of steam-power to navigation, and the time has come when an American can
make the tour of Europe with but little more expenditure of time and money
than it costs even a native of Europe to do it.

One of my principal objects in writing this book is to encourage others to
make similar tours. We would have plenty of books no traveling, if some of
them did represent the readers in the humbler spheres of life, but the
general impression in America is that no one can see Europe to any
satisfaction in less than a year or two and with an outlay of from a
thousand to two thousand dollars. This is a great mistake. If one travels
for pleasure mainly, it will certainly require a great deal of time and
money,