Smyrna times., 1893-02-15
The WAY TO co SIGHTSEEING.
An Old Philosopher Gives the Benefit oi
His ExnerieucA.

An Old Philosopher Gives the Benefit Of
His Experience.
For sightseers 1 will lay down two or
three rules which have guided me more
and more in my habits of travelling, and
for which think there is good founda-
ton:
If you will stay two or-three days in one
place you will get that sort of affection
for it and knowledge of its interior life,
if one may use so large phrase, which
makes you always remember it with
| pleasure. If, on the other hand, you
should spend the same three days in
going to three different places you have
in each of them only the annoyance of
dropping your anchor and pulling it up
again, only the little trials which neces-
sarily belong to the first hours in an inn
or lodging house, and before these lit
tie annOyances are well over you have
gone on your way again.
My experience is that have very little
recollection of any sort of places where
l have simply spent night or a part Of
day, and that for filling up that great
fund of experience and memories the
maintenance of which is the great object
of travelling it is always desirable to re-
main for a little while where You are
well off, that you may become acquaint-
ed not simply with the circumstances,
but with the real character of what in a
certain way you may thus make home.
hold that no man should travel with
the mere idea of being amused. He has
no right to walk into a town or an inn
and say to the first person he meets
there, Come and amuse me; show me
what there is which is entertaining"
Wherever man goes he should carry
certain tastes of his own, should have
certain objects which have interested
him i'll life, and he should inquire with
regard to those objects, as this particu-
lar place may have an answer to give to
his inquiries
And this l say with good deal of hes
itatiOn. l know nothing in the mere
crossing of the water which should
change us all into critics of fine art. I
am always a little amazed when go bv
chance into 4 picture gallery in Paris.
In Brussels, or i'll Antwerp, to find there
some well to do Americans whom |
never should by any accident have found
IN the academy at New York or the art
gallery III Boston. [ cannot see why we
should all be compelled to see paintings
III Europe, and in every city in Europe.
when at home we donot consider the ex-
animation of paintings to be our prin,i-
pal and especial business. l like to see
good picture, | think, as much as anv-
body does. But | cannot understand
why the profession OF traveller and
that OF a cOnnOisseur in art should be
considered, as certainly they are consid-
cred, as being very much the same thing.
30 do not believe, as 1 say, that per
son gains qualifications for an art critic
by the accident of his crossing the ocean.
To young travellers am forever saw
ing, keep scrapbooks" They are even
better than journals, by which | mean.
preserve littl" queer bits of printed in
formation which will come drifting into
your hands very day, and which in
after years VII have value from asso-
clatlon which Of course does not attach
to them, and Jy the same token what
even Is written at th3 moment has a
freshness aft-rward which no recollec-
ton brought out on rainy days can rival.
here IS tie advantage of q fountain
pen or half dozen sharpened pencils.
or which you cannot very easily lose all.
\ our Journal may be no sort of use to
anybody else, but it will always be of
value to yourself. Edward Everett Hale
in Boston Commonwealth.