And so in imagination our fair friend sketched out fanciful pilgrimages
for us. "You could walk from Gibraltar to the Pyrenees," she went on.
"You could walk from Venice to Berlin; from Brussels to Copenhagen; you
could walk from Munich to Budapest; you could walk right across Turkey,
from Constantinople to the Adriatic Sea. And Greece--see! you could walk
from Sparta to the Danube. To think of the romantic use you could make
of your four-hundred-odd-miles, and how different it sounds--Buffalo to
New York!"

And again she repeated, luxuriating in the romantic sound of the
words: "Constantinople to the Adriatic! Sparta to the Danube!--Buffalo
to New York!"

There was not wanting to the party the whole-souled,
my-country-'tis-of-thee American, who somewhat resented these European
comparisons, and declared that America was good enough for her, clearly
intimating that a certain lack of patriotism, even a certain immorality,
attached to the admiration of foreign countries. She also told us
somewhat severely that the same stars, if not better, shone over America
as over any other country, and that American scenery was the finest in
the world--not to speak of the American climate.

To all of which we bowed our heads in silence--but the frivolous,
European-minded Rosalind who had got us into this trouble retorted with a
grave face: "Wouldn't you just love, dear Miss----, to walk from
Hackensack to Omaha?"

Another voice was kind enough to explain for our encouragement that the
traveller found in a place exactly what he brought there, and that
romance was a personal gift, all in the personal point of view.