CHAPTER I
 

Lakeside was a pleasant little town of five or six thousand inhabitants,
and a rather pretty one, too, as towns go in the Far West.
It had church accommodations for thirty-five thousand, which is
the way of the Far West and the South, where everybody is religious,
and where each of the Protestant sects is represented and has a plant
of its own. Rank was unknown in Lakeside--unconfessed, anyway;
everybody knew everybody and his dog, and a sociable friendliness
was the prevailing atmosphere.

AN INSTRUCTIVE LITTLE TALE

A man may have no bad habits and have worse.

--Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
 

The starting point of this lecturing-trip around the world was Paris,
where we had been living a year or two.

We sailed for America, and there made certain preparations. This took
but little time. Two members of my family elected to go with me. Also a
carbuncle. The dictionary says a carbuncle is a kind of jewel. Humor is
out of place in a dictionary.

He reports the American joke correctly. In Boston they ask, How much
does he know? in New York, How much is he worth? in Philadelphia, Who
were his parents? And when an alien observer turns his telescope upon
us--advertisedly in our own special interest--a natural apprehension
moves us to ask, What is the diameter of his reflector?

I take a great interest in M. Bourget's chapters, for I know by the
newspapers that there are several Americans who are expecting to get a
whole education out of them; several who foresaw, and also foretold, that
our long night was over, and a light almost divine about to break upon
the land.

"His utterances concerning us are bound to be weighty and well
timed."

"We ought never to do wrong when people are looking."
 

I

The first scene is in the country, in Virginia; the time, 1880. There
has been a wedding, between a handsome young man of slender means and a
rich young girl--a case of love at first sight and a precipitate
marriage; a marriage bitterly opposed by the girl's widowed father.

One day it occurred to me that it had been many years
since the world had been afforded the spectacle of a man
adventurous enough to undertake a journey through Europe
on foot. After much thought, I decided that I was
a person fitted to furnish to mankind this spectacle.
So I determined to do it. This was in March, 1878.

I looked about me for the right sort of person to
accompany me in the capacity of agent, and finally
hired a Mr. Harris for this service.