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Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1856, by
GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS,
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for
the Southern District of New York.
MILLER & HOLMAN,
Printers and Stereotypers, N. Y.

Dedication TO
MRS. HENRY W. LONGFELLOW,

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In memory of the happy hours at our
Castles in Spain.

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A WORD TO THE GENTLE READER.

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An old book-keeper, who wears a white cravat and black
trowsers in the morning, who rarely goes to the opera, and
never dines out, is clearly a person of no fashion and of
no superior sources of information. His only journey is
from his house to his office; his only satisfaction is in doing
his duty; his only happiness is in his Prue and his children.

What romance can such a life have? What stories can
such a man tell?

Yet I think, sometimes, when I look up from the parquet
at the opera, and see Aurelia smiling in the boxes,
and holding her court of love, and youth, and beauty,
that the historians have not told of a fairer queen, nor
the travellers seen devouter homage. And when I remember
that it was in misty England that quaint old
George Herbert sang of the—


“Sweet day so cool, so calm, so bright—
The bridal of the earth and sky,”
I am sure that I see days as lovely in our clearer air, and
do not believe that Italian sunsets have a more gorgeous
purple or a softer gold.

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So, as the circle of my little life revolves, I console myself
with believing, what I cannot help believing, that a
man need not be a vagabond to enjoy the sweetest charm
of travel, but that all countries and all times repeat themselves
in his experience. This is an old philosophy, I am
told, and much favored by those who have travelled; and I
cannot but be glad that my faith has such a fine name and
such competent witnesses. I am assured, however, upon
the other hand, that such a faith is only imagination. But,
if that be true, imagination is as good as many voyages—
and how much cheaper!—a consideration which an old
book-keeper can never afford to forget.

I have not found, in my experience, that travellers always
bring back with them the sunshine of Italy or the elegance
of Greece. They tell us that there are such things, and that
they have seen them; but, perhaps, they saw them, as the
apples in the garden of the Hesperides were sometimes seen—
over the wall. I prefer the fruit which I can buy in the
market to that which a man tells me he saw in Sicily, but
of which there is no flavor in his story. Others, like
Moses Primrose, bring us a gross of such spectacles as we
prefer not to see; so that I begin to suspect a man must
have Italy and Greece in his heart and mind, if he would
ever see them with his eyes.

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I know that this may be only a device of that compassionate
imagination designed to comfort me, who shall never
take but one other journey than my daily beat. Yet there
have been wise men who taught that all scenes are but pictures
upon the mind; and if I can see them as I walk the
street that leads to my office, or sit at the office-window
looking into the court, or take a little trip down the bay or
up the river, why are not my pictures as pleasant and as
profitable as those which men travel for years, at great
cost of time, and trouble, and money, to behold?

For my part, I do not believe that any man can see
softer skies than I see in Prue's eyes; nor hear sweeter
music than I hear in Prue's voice; nor find a more heavenlighted
temple than I know Prue's mind to be. And when
I wish to please myself with a lovely image of peace and
contentment, I do not think of the plain of Sharon, nor of
the valley of Enna, nor of Arcadia, nor of Claude's pictures;
but, feeling that the fairest fortune of my life is the
right to be named with her, I whisper gently, to myself,
with a smile—for it seems as if my very heart smiled within
me, when I think of her—“Prue and I.”

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CONTENTS.

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