Applying the same principle to travel in Europe, I am eager to correct a mistake which many of you will be apt to make at the beginning,-- hot-blooded young Americans as you are, eager to "put through" what you are at, even though it be the most exquisite of enjoyments, and ignorant as you all are, till you are taught, of the possibilities of happy life before you, if you will only let the luscious pulp of your various bananas lie on your tongue and take all the good of it, instead of bolting it as if it were nauseous medicine. Because you have but little time in Europe, you will be anxious to see all you can. That is quite right. Remember, then, that true wisdom is to stay three days in one place, rather than to spend but one day in each of three. If you insist on one day in Oxford, one in Birmingham, one in Bristol, why then there are three inns or hotels to be hunted up, three packings and unpackings, three sets of letters to be presented, three sets of streets to learn, and, after it is all over, your memories of those three places will be merely of the outside misery of travel. Give up two of them altogether, then. Make yourself at home for the three days in whichever place of the three best pleases you. Sleep till your nine hours are up every night. Breakfast all together. Avail yourselves of your letters of introduction. See things which are to be seen, or persons who are to be known, at the right times. Above all, see twice whatever is worth seeing. Do not forget this rule;--we remember what we see twice. It is that stereoscopic memory of which I told you once before. We do not remember with anything like the same reality or precision what we have only seen once. It is in some slight appreciation of this great fundamental rule, that you stay three days in any place which you really mean to be acquainted with, that Miss Ferrier lays down her bright rule for a visit, that a visit ought "to consist of three days,--the rest day, the drest day, and the pressed day."
And, lastly, dear friends,--for the most entertaining of discourses on the most fascinating of themes must have a "lastly,"--lastly, be sure that you know what you travel for. "Why, we travel to have a good time," says that incorrigible Pauline Ingham, who will talk none but the Yankee language. Dear Pauline, if you go about the world expecting to find that same "good time" of yours ready-made, inspected, branded, stamped, jobbed by the jobbers, retailed by the retailers, and ready for you to buy with your spending-money, you will be sadly mistaken, though you have for spending-money all that united health, high spirits, good-nature, and kind heart of yours, and all papa's lessons of forgetting yesterday, leaving to-morrow alone, and living with all your might to-day. It will never do, Pauline, to have to walk up to the inn-keeper and say, "Please, we have come for a good time, and where shall we find it?" Take care that you have in reserve one object, I do not care much what it is. Be ready to press plants, or be ready to collect minerals. Or be ready to wash in water-colors, I do not care how poor they are. Or, in Europe, be ready to inquire about the libraries, or the baby-nurseries, or the art-collections, or the botanical gardens. Understand in your own mind that there is something you can inquire for and be interested in, though you be dumped out of a car at New Smithville. It may, perhaps, happen that you do not for weeks or months revert to this reserved object of yours. Then happiness may come; for, as you have found out already, I think, _happiness_ is something which _happens_, and is not contrived. On this theme you will find an excellent discourse in the beginning of Mr. Freeman Clarke's "Eleven Weeks in Europe."