d the slow;
here it is of us at last, it is ours, and offers at every turn
glimpses of beauty that, in former days, we could only enjoy when the
tedious journey was ended."

The "tour abroad" has ever been the lodestone which has drawn
countless thousands of home-loving English and Americans to
Continental Europe. Pleasure--mere pleasure--has accounted for many
of these pilgrims, but by far the largest proportion have been those
who seek education and edification combined.

One likes to be well cared for when he journeys, whether by road or
rail, and demands accordingly, if not all the comforts of home, at
least many things that the native knows or cares little of. A
Frenchman does not desire a sitting-room, a reading-room, or a fire
in his sleeping-room, and, according to his lights, he is quite
right. He finds all this at a cafe, and prefers to go there for it.
The steam-heated hotel, with running water everywhere, is a rarity in
France, as indeed it is in England.

Outside Paris the writer has found this combination but seldom in
France; at Lyons, Marseilles, Moulins in the Allier, and at
Chatellerault in Poitou only. Modernity is making its way in France,
but only in spots; its progress is steady, but as yet it has not
penetrated into many outlying districts. Modern _art nouveau_ ideas
in France, which are banal enough, but which are an improvement over
the Eastlake and horsehair horrors of the Victorian and
Louis-Philippe periods, are tending to eliminate old-fashioned ideas
for the benefit of the traveller who would rather eat his meals in a
bright, airy apartment than in stuffy, dark hole known in England as
a coffee-room.

In France, in particular, the contrast of the new and old that one
occasionally meets with is staggering. It is all very well in its
way, this blending of antiquity and modernity, and gives one
something of the thrill of romance, which most of us have in our
make-up to a greater or lesser extent; but, on the other hand,
romance gets some hard knocks when one finds a Roman sarcophagus used
as a watering-trough; or a chapel as an automobile garage, as he
often will in the Midi.

One thing the American, and the Britisher to a lesser extent, be he
automobilist or mere tourist, must fully realize, and that is that
the tourist business is a more highly developed industry in
Continental Europe than it is anywhere else. In Switzerland one may
well say that it is a national industry, and in som