Accordingly, I have tried. This is a sensible book. I want you to understand that. This is a book to improve your mind. In this book I tell you all about Germany--at all events, all I know about Germany--and the Ober-Ammergau Passion Play. I also tell you about other things. I do not tell you all I know about all these other things, because I do not want to swamp you with knowledge. I wish to lead you gradually. When you have learnt this book, you can come again, and I will tell you some more. I should only be defeating my own object did I, by making you think too much at first, give you a perhaps, lasting dislike to the exercise. I have purposely put the matter in a light and attractive form, so that I may secure the attention of the young and the frivolous. I do not want them to notice, as they go on, that they are being instructed; and I have, therefore, endeavoured to disguise from them, so far as is practicable, that this is either an exceptionally clever or an exceptionally useful work. I want to do them good without their knowing it. I want to do you all good--to improve your minds and to make you think, if I can. _What_ you will think after you have read the book, I do not want to know; indeed, I would rather not know. It will be sufficient reward for me to feel that I have done my duty, and to receive a percentage on the gross sales. LONDON, _March_, 1891. MONDAY, 19TH My Friend B.--Invitation to the Theatre.--A Most Unpleasant Regulation.--Yearnings of the Embryo Traveller.--How to Make the Most of One's Own Country.--Friday, a Lucky Day.--The Pilgrimage Decided On. My friend B. called on me this morning and asked me if I would go to a theatre with him on Monday next. "Oh, yes! certainly, old man," I replied. "Have you got an order, then?" He said: "No; they don't give orders. We shall have to pay." "Pay! Pay to go into a theatre!" I answered, in astonishment. "Oh, nonsense! You are joking." "My dear fellow," he rejoined, "do you think I should suggest paying if it were possible to get in by any other means? But the people who run this theatre would not even understand what was meant by a 'free list,' the uncivilised barbarians! It is of no use pretending to them that you are on the Press, because they don't want the Press; they don't think anything of the Press. It is no good writing to the acting manager, because there is no acting manager. It would be a waste of time offering to exhibit bills, because they don't have any bills--not of that sort. If you want to go in to see the show, you've got to pay. If you don't pay, you stop outside; that's their brutal rule." "Dear me," I said, "what a very unpleasant arrangement! And whereabouts is this extraordinary theatre? I don't think I can ever have been inside it." "I don't think you have," he replied; "it is at Ober-Ammergau--first turning on the left after you leave Ober railway-station, fifty miles from Munich."