r, mountain and plain, but if we had
attempted to go anywhere, with absolutely no guide but memory, nine out
of ten of us would be lost on the first stage of the journey. You are
now simply assimilating what you learned at school, and making the
facts, which you took on trust then, part and parcel of your actual
experience now. It seems to me one of the best ways to study geography
at home is to travel on paper. That comes nearest the real thing. Map
out a route, buy your tickets (in imagination), take your conveyance,
and on the way see everything possible to be gleaned from those eyes
which have gone before, and left a record of their impressions. Try
and think if you would see in the same way, and what else might be
observed by quick eyes, natural to occur in that part of the globe. If
one has imagination he may almost believe, in time, that he has really
visited the places so studied.

"I knew a young fellow, once, who lived in an insignificant town in
Vermont, and had never been fifty miles from home, yet who kept up such
journeys for years, and many a time, in talking with him, I, the real
traveler, would learn facts about certain localities where I had been,
from him who never set foot near them. Just to prove him, once, I
said, 'Are you acquainted with Salt Lake City?' 'Pretty well,' he
answered modestly. Having spent a summer or two there, myself, I
thought I would try and trip him up, so said, carelessly, 'When I stood
in front of Brigham Young's Square and looked at that great town on my
left'--but there he interrupted me, quick as a flash, 'You mean looked
down upon the town at your right, don't you? Brigham's Square is on
what is called the North Bench, and standing before it you must
overlook the larger part of the city lying upon your right.' Of course
this was correct, and I had to acknowledge that he really knew as much
about many localities as I, who had visited them. But he was unusual."

"Well," said Dwight slowly, "what I have to complain of about travelers
is that they don't tell the little things--the details, you know. I
suppose it seems silly to them to say whether they went on board a
steamer in a boat, or across a gangway, or up a flight of steps, or to
describe just how a car looks when they travel by rail, but I used to
wish they would. And when I write my book of travels I'm going to!"

"I would," said his sister encouragingly.

"Well, you wait! But say, uncle, there are s