PREFACE
TO JOSEPH H. TWICHELL
It would be unfair to hold you responsible for these light sketches
of a summer trip, which are now gathered into this little volume in
response to the usual demand in such cases; yet you cannot escape
altogether. For it was you who first taught me to say the name
Baddeck; it was you who showed me its position on the map, and a
seductive letter from a home missionary on Cape Breton Island, in
relation to the abundance of trout and salmon in his field of labor.
That missionary, you may remember, we never found, nor did we see his
tackle; but I have no reason to believe that he does not enjoy good
fishing in the right season. You understand the duties of a home
missionary much better than I do, and you know whether he would be
likely to let a couple of strangers into the best part of his
preserve.
But I am free to admit that after our expedition was started you
speedily relieved yourself of all responsibility for it, and turned
it over to your comrade with a profound geographical indifference;
you would as readily have gone to Baddeck by Nova Zembla as by Nova
Scotia. The flight over the latter island was, you knew, however, no
part of our original plan, and you were not obliged to take any
interest in it. You know that our design was to slip rapidly down,
by the back way of Northumberland Sound, to the Bras d'Or, and spend
a week fishing there; and that the greater part of this journey here
imperfectly described is not really ours, but was put upon us by fate
and by the peculiar arrangement of provincial travel.
It would have been easy after our return to have made up from
libraries a most engaging description of the Provinces, mixing it
with historical, legendary, botanical, geographical, and ethnological
information, and seasoning it with adventure from your glowing
imagination. But it seemed to me that it would be a more honest
contribution if our account contained only what we saw, in our rapid
travel; for I have a theory that any addition to the great body of
print, however insignificant it may be, has a value in proportion to
its originality and individuality, - however slight either is, - and
very little value if it is a compilation of the observations of
others. In this case I know how slight the value is; and I can only
hope that as the trip was very entertaining to us, the record of it
may not be wholly unentertaining to those of like tastes.
Of one thing, my dear friend, I am certain: if the readers of this
little journey could have during its persual the companionship that
the writer had when it was made, they would think it altogether
delightful. There is no pleasure comparable to that of going about
the world, in pleasant weather, with a good comrade, if the mind is
distracted neither by care, nor ambition, nor the greed of gain. The
delight there is in seeing things, without any hope of pecuniary
profit from them! We certainly enjoyed that inward peace which the
philosopher associates with the absence of desire for money. For, as
Plato says in the Phaedo, "whence come wars and fightings and
factions? whence but from the body and the lusts of the body? For
wars are occasioned by the love of money." So also are the majority
of the anxieties of life. We left these behind when we went into the
Provinces with no design of acquiring anything there. I hope it may
be my fortune to travel further with you in this fair world, under
similar circumstances.
NOOK FARM, HARTFORD, April 10, 1874.
C. D. W.
BADDECK AND THAT SORT OF THING
"Ay, now I am in Arden: the more fool I; when I was at home,
I was in a better place; but travellers must be content."
- TOUCHSTONE.
Two comrades and travelers, who sought a better country than the
United States in the month of August, found themselves one
evening in apparent possession of the ancient town of Boston.
The shops were closed at early candle-light; the fashionable
inhabitants had retired into the country, or into the
second-story-back, of their princely residences, and even an air of
tender gloom settled upon the Common. The streets were almost empty,
and one passed into the burnt district, where the scarred ruins and
the uplifting piles of new brick and stone spread abroad under the
flooding light of a full moon like another Pompeii, without any
increase in his feeling of tranquil seclusion. Even the news-offices
had put up their shutters, and a confiding stranger could nowhere buy
a guide-book to help his wandering feet about the reposeful city, or
to show him how to get out of it. There was, to be sure, a cheerful
tinkle of horse-car bells in the air, and in the creeping vehicles
which created this levity of sound were a few lonesome passengers on
their way to Scollay's Square; but the two travelers, not having
well-regulated minds, had no desire to go there. What would have
become of Boston if the great fire had reached this sacred point of
pilgrimage no merely human mind can imagine. Without it, I suppose
the horse-cars would go continually round and round, never stopping,
until the cars fell away piecemeal on the track, and the horses
collapsed into a mere mass of bones and harness, and the
brown-covered books from the Public Library, in the hands of the
fading virgins who carried them, had accumulated fines to an
incalculable amount.
Boston, notwithstanding its partial destruction by fire, is still a
good place to start from. When one meditates an excursion into an
unknown and perhaps perilous land, where the flag will not protect
him and the greenback will only partially support him, he likes to
steady and tranquilize his mind by a peaceful halt and a serene
start.
