SAUNTERINGS

By Charles Dudley Warner



MISAPPREHENSIONS CORRECTED

I should not like to ask an indulgent and idle public to saunter
about with me under a misapprehension. It would be more agreeable to
invite it to go nowhere than somewhere; for almost every one has been
somewhere, and has written about it. The only compromise I can
suggest is, that we shall go somewhere, and not learn anything about
it. The instinct of the public against any thing like information in
a volume of this kind is perfectly justifiable; and the reader will
perhaps discover that this is illy adapted for a text-book in
schools, or for the use of competitive candidates in the
civil-service examinations.

Years ago, people used to saunter over the Atlantic, and spend weeks
in filling journals with their monotonous emotions. That is all
changed now, and there is a misapprehension that the Atlantic has
been practically subdued; but no one ever gets beyond the "rolling
forties" without having this impression corrected.

I confess to have been deceived about this Atlantic, the roughest and
windiest of oceans. If you look at it on the map, it does n't appear
to be much, and, indeed, it is spoken of as a ferry. What with the
eight and nine days' passages over it, and the laying of the cable,
which annihilates distance, I had the impression that its tedious