e's travels interesting to other people. It is a great misfortune for
biographers that there are abundance of people who are stirred, partly
by unwonted leisure and partly by awakened interest, to keep a diary
only when they are abroad. These extracts from diaries of foreign
travel, which generally pour their muddy stream into a biography on the
threshold of the hero's manhood, are things to be resolutely skipped.
What one desires in a biography is to see the ordinary texture of a
man's life, an account of his working days, his normal hours; and to
most people the normal current of their lives appears so commonplace and
uninteresting that they keep no record of it; while they often keep
an elaborate record of their impressions of foreign travel, which
are generally superficial and picturesque, and remarkably like the
impressions of all other intelligent people. A friend of mine returned
the other day from an American tour, and told me that he received
a severe rebuke, out of the mouth of a babe, which cured him of
expatiating on his experiences. He lunched with his brother soon after
his return, and was holding forth with a consciousness of brilliant
descriptive emphasis, when his eldest nephew, aged eight, towards the
end of the meal, laid down his spoon and fork, and said piteously to
his mother, "Mummy, I MUST talk; it does make me so tired to hear Uncle
going on like that." A still more effective rebuke was administered by a
clever lady of my acquaintance to a cousin of hers, a young lady who
had just returned from India, and was very full of her experiences.
The cousin had devoted herself during breakfast to giving a lively
description of social life in India, and was preparing to spend the
morning in continuing her lecture, when the elder lady slipped out of
the room, and returned with some sermon-paper, a blotting-book, and a
pen. "Maud," she said, "this is too good to be lost: you must write it
all down, every word!" The projected manuscript did not come to very
much, but the lesson was not thrown away.

Perhaps, for most people, the best results of travel are that they
return with a sense of grateful security to the familiar scene: the
monotonous current of life has been enlivened, the old relationships
have gained a new value, the old gossip is taken up with a comfortable
zest; the old rooms are the best, after all; the homely language is
better than the outlandish tongue; it is a comfort to have done with
squ