World-wandering is played out. It waa all right two or three' centuries ayo, when the more travellers' lies one told the more the hero you were thought. But ywople have got so clever now-a-days xnd they know 80 much, that you can't spell the name of city in' Western Chinn wrong without somebody writing and hinting you are dundering ass, and that it should by spelt and so, You've got to. tread so warily that travel has become dull. That ix, you've gat to be exact because, if you're not, you'll be having tea somewhere tomorrow afternoon, and your hostess's daughter, ayed thirteen, will be pointing out your errors. It was far better in the old days, when a traveller really was a traveller, and there was nobody to question him.
In some respects I may call myself the lust of thenomads, a modest, unassuming chronicler of things seen. I don't know how many countries I have beau in—it's either twenty-nine or thirty—but try ay I have done all these years, I never into a stretch of country where a En been before. I've just fini wading the proofs recording my wanderings. And dull, tame, and unexciting they are compared with what they might have been if only I had wone journeying five or six hundred years ayo. SoI've been reading again "The Voyages and Travels of Sit John Maundeville, Kt.," who was the first of the English nomads. And tears many a tine have dimmed my eyes as I perused his pious, pontifically blest pages. I've been in the places Sir John Maundeville visited; and more, But I veter behold the wonders he saw: there were no dragons to fight, no gorgon-headed monsters to appease, no subterranean. rivers to gate. I've read somewhere that Maund ville was an old liar. But my belief is thab the marvels he records orb perfectly trues
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.