These, naturally, are not the kind of English to whom I refer: the kind who I always feel are the ideal travelers. As travelers they are ideal, because they are (for want of a better term) so “well rounded.” They bring to their travels in foreign lands so much--a quiet enthusiasm, cultivated tastes, thoroughness; a mental and physical vitality that among Americans is very rare. Unlike the American schoolma’am, they never specialize on dates and art criticism; they usually know the dates beforehand, and are capable of discriminating between the good and trashy. They enjoy making agreeable acquaintances, but acquaintances are not the sole object of their travels. They don’t like to miss anything, and, although they are never in a hurry, nothing escapes them. While an American family is taking an exhausted nap or hanging about a hotel wondering what to do, these English people will be tramping five miles to see the sunset and get up an appetite for dinner. There is something admirably complete about them. They enjoy the churches and galleries and appreciate them, but they are also sincerely interested in the life of the people and in nature. The incidents of travel they take calmly as they come, and when they complain it is only because their rights have been infringed upon. Out of traveling they get, it always strikes me, everything there is to get. That they do, I have begun to believe, is simply because of what they bring to their travels. They bring (to repeat) quiet but unflagging enthusiasm, considerable cultivation, the habit of thoroughness in anything they undertake, excellent digestions and equable tempers. All of which lands us bump up against the inevitable platitude that invariably stands guard at the other end of almost every train of thought. Abstractly considered, travel is at best an uncomfortable activity more often than not: strange beds, strange food, a constant, hideous packing and unpacking of trunks too small to contain conveniently one’s few possessions; long, dreary intervals in railway stations, nightmare scrambles at custom-houses, steamers that bury their noses in the sea and kick their heels in the air, sleeping cars always either too hot or too cold. Such is travel in the abstract. Its pleasant qualities, like the pleasant qualities of almost every other pleasure in life, must be supplied largely by ourselves. If travel did nothing else for us, it would be valuable by reason of its ability to drive home this old truth. In order thoroughly to enjoy travel we must be able to give considerably more than we get. FELLOW PASSENGERS