effect in
bringing the various sections of the country into a better understanding
of one another, and in imparting to all a fuller sense of the community
they possessed in profit and loss, in honor and dishonor.

It is a somewhat singular fact that these sketches of travel led Warner
incidentally to enter into an entirely new field of literary exertion.
This was novel-writing. Something of this nature he had attempted in
conjunction with Mark Twain in the composition of "The Gilded Age," which
appeared in 1873. The result, however, was unsatisfactory to both the
collaborators. Each had humor, but the humor of each was fundamentally
different. But the magazine with which Warner had become connected was
desirous that he should prepare for it an account of some of the
principal watering-places and summer resorts of the country. Each was to
be visited in turn and its salient features were to be described. It was
finally suggested that this could be done most effectively by weaving
into a love story occurrences that might happen at a number of these
places which were made the subjects of description. The principal
characters were to take their tours under the personal conduct of the
novelist. They were to go to the particular spots selected North and
South, according to the varying seasons of the year. It was a somewhat
novel way of, visiting resorts of this nature; there are those to whom it
will seem altogether more agreeable than would be the visiting of them in
person. Hence appeared in 1886 the articles which were collected later in
the volume entitled "Their Pilgrimage."

Warner executed the task which had been assigned him with his wonted
skill. The completed work met with success--with so much success indeed
that he was led later to try his fortune further in the same field and
bring out the trilogy of novels which go under the names respectively of
"A Little Journey in the World," "The Golden House," and "That Fortune."
Each of these is complete in itself, each can be read by itself; but the
effect of each and of the whole series can be best secured by reading
them in succession. In the first it is the story of how a great fortune
was made in the stock market; in the second, how it was fraudulently
diverted from the object for which it was intended; and in the third, how
it was most beneficially and satisfactorily lost. The scene of the last
novel was laid in part in Warner's early home in Charlemont. These works