This appeal is of set purpose a limited one, made to the few
who are content to travel for the sake of the pleasures of the road, free
from the comforts that beset them at home, and free also from the popular
belief that their city, religion, morals, and social laws are the best in
the world. The qualifications that fit a man to make money and acquire the
means for modern travel are often fatal to proper appreciation of the
unfamiliar world he proposes to visit. To restore the balance of things,
travel agents and other far-seeing folks have contrived to inflict upon
most countries within the tourist's reach all the modern conveniences by
which he lives and thrives. So soon as civilising missions and
missionaries have pegged out their claims, even the desert is deemed
incomplete without a modern hotel or two, fitted with electric light,
monstrous tariff, and served by a crowd of debased guides. In the wake of
these improvements the tourist follows, finds all the essentials of the
life he left at home, and, knowing nothing of the life he came to see, has
no regrets. So from Algiers, Tunis, Cairo--ay, even from Jerusalem itself,
all suggestion of great history has passed, and one hears among ruins,
once venerable, the globe-trotter's cry of praise.
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