BOSTON, _April_, 1886.




OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE

* * * * *

I.


I begin this record with the columnar, self-reliant capital letter to
signify that there is no disguise in its egoisms. If it were a chapter
of autobiography, this is what the reader would look for as a matter of
course. Let him consider it as being such a chapter, and its egoisms
will require no apology.

I have called the record _our_ hundred days, because I was
accompanied by my daughter, without the aid of whose younger eyes and
livelier memory, and especially of her faithful diary, which no fatigue
or indisposition was allowed to interrupt, the whole experience would
have remained in my memory as a photograph out of focus.

We left Boston on the 29th of April, 1886, and reached New York on the
29th of August, four months of absence in all, of which nearly three
weeks were taken up by the two passages; one week was spent in Paris,
and the rest of the time in England and Scotland.