A Traveler at Forty

The Christmas holidays were drawing near and Barfleur was making due preparations for the celebration of that event. He was a stickler for the proper observance of those things...

After I had been at Bridgely Level four or five days Barfleur suggested that I visit Marlowe, which was quite near by on the Thames, a place which he said fairly represented the...

There is something about the French nation which, in spite of its dreary-looking cities, exhibits an air of metropolitan up-to-dateness. I don’t know where outside of America yo...

I stood one evening in Piccadilly, at the dinner hour, staring into the bright shop windows. London’s display of haberdashery and gold and silver ornaments interests me intensel...

I have just turned forty. I have seen a little something of life. I have been a newspaper man, editor, magazine contributor, author and, before these things, several odd kinds o...

The charms of Monte Carlo are many. Our first morning there, to the sound of a horn blowing reveille in the distance, I was up betimes enjoying the wonderful spectacles from my...

I shall never forget my first morning in Paris--the morning that I woke up after about two hours’ sleep or less, prepared to put in a hard day at sight-seeing because Barfleur h...

During all my stay at Bridgely Level I had been hearing more or less--an occasional remark--of a certain Sir Scorp, an Irish knight and art critic, a gentleman who had some of t...

If a preliminary glance at Switzerland suggested to me a high individuality, primarily Teutonic but secondarily national and distinctive, all I saw afterwards in Germany and Hol...

“London sings in my ears.” I remember writing this somewhere about the fourth or fifth day of my stay. It was delicious, the sense of novelty and wonder it gave me. I am one of...

As we approached Rome in the darkness I was on the qui vive for my first glimpse of it; and impatient with wonder as to what the morning would reveal. I was bound for the Hotel...

The following Wednesday Barfleur and I returned to London via Calais and Dover. We had been, between whiles, to the races at Longchamps, luncheons at Au Père Boivin, the Pré Cat...

The Italian hill-cities are such a strange novelty to the American of the Middle West--used only to the flat reaches of the prairie, and the city or town gathered primarily abou...

“I am going to introduce you to such a nice woman,” Mrs. Barfleur told me the second morning I was in Rome, in her very enthusiastic way. “She is charming. I am sure you will li...

Berlin, when I reached it, first manifested itself in a driving rain. If I laugh at it forever and ever as a blunder-headed, vainglorious, self-appreciative city I shall always...

After Italy and Switzerland the scenery of the Rhine seemed very mild and unpretentious to me, yet it was very beautiful. The Hudson from Albany to New York is far more imposing...

My days in Monte Carlo after this were only four, exactly. In spite of my solemn resolutions of the morning the spirit of this gem-like world got into my bones by three o’clock;...

During the first ten days I saw considerable of German night-life, in company with Herr A., a stalwart Prussian who went out of his way to be nice to me. I cannot say that, afte...

In studying out my itinerary at Florence I came upon the homely advice in Baedeker that in Venice “care should be taken in embarking and disembarking, especially when the tide i...

Before I go a step further in this narrative I must really animadvert to the subject of restaurants and the _haute cuisine_ of France generally, for in this matter Barfleur was...

Brooding over the almost endless treasures of the city, I ambled into the Strozzi Palace one afternoon, that perfect example of Florentine palatial architecture, then occupied b...

At last the train was started and we were off. The track was not so wide, if I am not mistaken, as ours, and the little freight or goods cars were positively ridiculous--mere wh...

It was not so long after this that I journeyed southward. My plan was to leave London two days ahead of Barfleur, visit Canterbury and Dover, and meet with him there to travel t...

I am writing these notes on Tuesday, November twenty-eighth, very close to a grate fire in a pretty little sitting-room in an English country house about twenty-five miles from...

and one of my pieces of luggage was left there as a guarantee that they belonged to me. It looked like rain when the train arrived, and we went below for a sandwich and a cup of...

All my life before going abroad I had been filled with a curiosity as to the character of the Riviera and Monte Carlo. I had never quite understood that Nice, Cannes, Mentone, S...

The remainder of my days in Rome were only three or four. I had seen much of it that has been in no way indicated here. True to my promise I had looked up at his hotel my travel...

Baedeker says that Pisa has a population of twenty-seven thousand two hundred people and that it is a quiet town. It is. I caught the spell of a score of places like this as I w...

With all the treasures of my historic reading in mind from the lives of the Medici and Savonarola to that of Michelangelo and the Florentine school of artists, I was keen to see...

After a few days I went to London for the first time--I do not count the night of my arrival, for I saw nothing but the railway terminus--and, I confess, I was not impressed as...

For years before going to England I had been interested in the north of England--the land, as I was accustomed to think, of the under dog. England, if one could trust one’s impr...

I entered Switzerland at Chiasso, a little way from Lake Como in Italy, and left it at Basle near the German frontier, and all I saw was mountains--mountains--mountains--some ca...

The first Sunday I was in Rome I began my local career with a visit to the church of Santa Maria Maggiore, that faces the Via Cavour not far from the Continental Hotel where I w...

It was only by intuition, and by asking many questions, that at times I could extract the significance of certain places from Barfleur as quickly as I wished. He was always reti...

It was after this night that Barfleur took his departure for London for two weeks, where business affairs were calling him during which time I was to make myself as idle and gay...

I came near finding myself in serious straights financially on leaving Berlin; for, owing to an oversight, and the fact that I was lost in pleasant entertainment up to quite the...

Once I was in Paris again. It was delightful, for now it was spring, or nearly so, and the weather was pleasant. People were pouring into the city in droves from all over the wo...

I packed my trunks, thinking of this big ship and the fact that my trip was over and that never again could I cross the Atlantic for the first time. A queer world this. We can o...

It was ten o’clock the next morning when I arose and looked at my watch. I thought it might be eight-thirty, or seven. The day was slightly gray with spray flying. There was a s...

As interesting as any days that I spent in London were two in the East End, though I am sorry to add more drabby details to those just narrated. All my life I had heard of this...

At Middleton the mills are majestically large and the cottages relatively minute. There is a famous old inn here, very picturesque to look upon, and Somebody of Something’s comf...

Whatever the medieval atmosphere of Florence may have been, and when I was there the exterior appearance of the central heart was obviously somewhat akin to its fourteenth- and...

Amsterdam I should certainly include among my cities of light and charm, a place to live in. Not that it has, in my judgment, any of that capital significance of Paris or Rome o...

Before leaving Frankfort I hurried to Cook’s office to look after my mail. I found awaiting me a special delivery letter from a friend of Barfleur’s, a certain famous pianist, M...

Not having as yet been in the _Cirque privé_ at Monte Carlo, I was perhaps unduly impressed by the splendor of the rooms devoted to gambling in this amazingly large casino. Ther...

We returned at between seven and eight that night. After a bath I sat out on the large balcony, or veranda, commanding the valley, and enjoyed the moonlight. The burnished surfa...

As pleasing hours as any that I spent in London were connected with the Thames--a murky little stream above London Bridge, compared with such vast bodies as the Hudson and the M...

I recall the next day, Sunday, with as much interest as any date, for on that day at one-thirty I encountered my first London drawing-room. I recall now as a part of this fortun...

Aside from the cathedral of St. Mark’s, the Doge’s Palace and the Academy or Venetian gallery of old masters, I could find little of artistic significance in Venice--little asid...

At three o’clock I left these pleasant people to visit the Ryks Museum and the next morning ran over to Haarlem, a half-hour away, to look at the Frans Hals in the Stadhuis. Haa...

Right here I propose to interpolate my second dissertation on the servant question and I can safely promise, I am sure, that it will not be the last. One night, not long before,...

It was quite dark when I finally came across a sort of tap-room “restaurant” whose quaint atmosphere charmed me. The usual pewter plates and tankards adorned the dull red and br...

It was one evening shortly after I had lunched with Mrs. W. that Barfleur and I dined with Miss E., the young actress who had come over on the steamer with us. It was interestin...

One of the things which dawned upon me in moving about England, and particularly as I was leaving it, was the reason for the inestimable charm of Dickens. I do not know that any...