We Are Going Away From Here

Foreword.--It has always seemed to me that the principal drawback
about the average guidebook is that it is over-freighted with
facts. Guidebooks heretofore have made a specialty of facts--have
abounded in them; facts to be found on every page and in every
paragraph. Reading such a work, you imagine that the besotted
author said to himself, "I will just naturally fill this thing
chock-full of facts"--and then went and did so to the extent of a
prolonged debauch.

Now personally I would be the last one in the world to decry facts
as such. In the abstract I have the highest opinion of them. But
facts, as someone has said, are stubborn things; and stubborn
things, like stubborn people, are frequently tiresome. So it
occurred to me that possibly there might be room for a guidebook
on foreign travel which would not have a single indubitable fact
concealed anywhere about its person. I have even dared to hope
there might be an actual demand on the part of the general public
for such a guidebook. I shall endeavor to meet that desire--if
it exists.

While we are on the subject I wish to say there is probably not a
statement made by me here or hereafter which cannot readily be
controverted. Communications from parties desiring to controvert
this or that assertion will be considered in the order received.
The line forms on the left and parties will kindly avoid crowding.