Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1903-03-12
STAY-AT-HOMES,
They Have all the Better of the Globe
TrotterS.

Perpetual motion and listless in
| ertia as applied to human beings are
matters of temperament. Whether the
peripatetic globe-trotters or the pei
slstent stay-at-hOmes are the hap
pier, is a mOoted question. That old
proverb, "a rolling stone gathers no
moss" is offset by another homely
saying Of like antiquity: ga setting
hen never gets fat Those ancient
philosophers who set out with scrip
| and staff and trudgei from land to
land with the laudable purpose of
gaining knowledge, though they
reached each desired goal footsore,
the highways, were more to be envied
than the modern tourist who at
| tempts to flee from himself by aim
less wanderings from land to land and
| from city to city,-or that other speci-
men Of the genus globe-trotter, who
goes tearing around famous places
for the mere pleasure of saying he
has been there.
Despite the luxuriousness of mod
ern travel, it has many drawbacks.
! Seaslckness, car-nausea, broiling
suns, benumbing frosts, sitting dust,
bad hotel, hard bed, ill-cooked food,
tips, exorbitant charges, steamboat
wrecks and railway smash-Gps, are
: only a few of the ills that world-rov-
ing flesh is heir to-. Some countries
reek with garlic, others with sauer-
kraut; fees and other verm1n infest
even the stateliest of the old palaces,
and tourists tell us that they never
suffer so much from cold as in the So
called sunny lands Of the earth.
| Others say that, outside of England,
no Europeans have any idea of what
we Americans would call comfortable
| living, and that even the English are
far behind us in the modern appli-
ances Of domestic life. In the Orient
the conditions of existence for the
traveller are simply unspeakable.
The stay-at-home avoids all these
discomforts and annoyances. Placid
ly seated under his own vine and fig
tree. he is content to Obtain ais
knowledge at second hand, from
books, pictures, illustrated lectures,
| the accounts of those who have seen
the world 1t is by proxy that he
climbs mountains, gazes down into
volcanic craters, delves in n1ephilic
| catacombs, explores legend-haunted
and unsanitary palaces, visits art gal
ieries and museums, and at no peril OF
! life and limb gains a personal knowl-
edge of all sorts of Out-Of-the-Way
places At a comparatively small
outlay Of money, without danger, ex-
citement, mental collapse or physical
WEAKNESS. he absorbs all that his
/ gIobe-trotting friend has gained al
such an exoTbitant cost.
But there is another side to the
shield. The globe-trotters who have
seen life in strange lands and gazed
upon the great spectacles of nature
| and the grand achievements of art,
! look with contempt on the stay-at-
| homes, who in eschewing travel have
! missed the greatest Of educators, and
have allowed their lives to shrink into
| depIorably narrow limits. WI lie the
| cosmopolitan or citizen of the world
knows from actual observation it's
grandeur and it's littlences, the stay
at-home. shut in by contracted hor-
lions, is prone to think
.The crack1e of his rustic burgh,
The murmur of the world
Extensive foreign travel is a good
thing. if constant change from place
to place does not foster spirit of
restlessness that makes the globe
trotter a sort of Wandering Jew, for