They visit a magnificent country
that is trying the experiment of the world, and write about their
shaving-soap and their babies' nurses."
"Just where they are right. Just why I like the race, from Trollope
down. They give you something to take hold of. I tell you,
Halicarnassus, it is the personality of the writer, and not the nature
of the scenery or of the institutions, that makes the interest. It
stands to reason. If it were not so, one book would be all that ever
need be written, and that book would be a census report. For a republic
is a republic, and Niagara is Niagara forever; but tell how you stood on
the chain-bridge at Niagara--if there is one there--and bought a cake of
shaving-soap from a tribe of Indians at a fabulous price, or how your
baby jumped from the arms of the careless nurse into the Falls, and
immediately your own individuality is thrown around the scenery, and it
acquires a human interest. It is always five miles from one place to
another, but that is mere almanac and statistics. Let a poet walk the
five miles, and narrate his experience with birds and bees and flowers
and grasses and water and sky, and it becomes literature. And let me
tell you further, Sir, a book of travels is just as interesting as the
person who writes it is interesting.
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