Chapter I: Preface

The difference between a ramble and a journey is about the same as that between pleasure and business. When you go anywhere for a serious purpose, you make a journey; but if you go for pleasure (and don't take the pleasure too seriously, as many do) you only ramble.

The sketches in this volume, which takes its name from the first chapter, are based upon "rambles," which were for the most part merely incidental excursions, made possible by various "journeys" undertaken for more serious purposes. It has been the practice of the author for many years to carry a camera on his travels, so that, if chance should take him within easy distance of some place of literary, historic, or scenic interest, he might not miss the opportunity to pursue his favorite avocation.

If the reader is asked to make long flights, as from Scotland to Italy, then back, across the Atlantic, to New England, and thence overland to Wyoming and Arizona, he must remember that ramblers take no account of distance or direction. In this case they must take no account of time, for these rambles are but the chance happenings that have occurred at intervals in a period of more than a dozen years.

People who are in a hurry, and those who in traveling seek to "do" the largest number of places in the shortest number of days, are advised not to travel with an amateur photographer. Not only must he have leisure to find and study his subjects, but he is likely to wander away from the well-worn paths and use up his time in making inquiries, in a fashion quite exasperating to the tourist absorbed in his itinerary.

The rambles here chronicled could not possibly be organized into an itinerary or moulded into a guidebook. The author simply invites those who have inclinations similar to his own, to wander with him, away from the customary paths of travel, and into the homes of certain distinguished authors or the scenes of their writings, and to visit with him various places of historic interest or natural beauty, without a thought of maps, distances, time-tables, or the toil and dust of travel. This is the real essence of rambling.

The chapter on "The Country of Mrs. Humphry Ward" was published originally in _The Outlook_ in 1909, and "A Day in Wordsworth's Country," in the same magazine in 1910.

CONTENTS

I. THE LURE OF THE CAMERA 1

II. LITERARY RAMBLES IN GREAT BRITAIN 15

English Courtesy--The George Eliot
Country--Experiences in Rural England.
Overcoming Obstacles--A London
"Bobby"--Carlyle's Birthplace--The Country of
Scott and Burns

III. A DAY IN WORDSWORTH'S COUNTRY 49

IV. FROM HAWTHORNDEN TO ROSLIN GLEN 73