As she becomes experienced in her vocation she learns and remembers
all the routes of travelling. She is acquainted with and can explain
all galleries, cathedrals, and palaces. She knows the genealogies of
the reigning kings, and hardly loses herself among German dukes. She
understands politics, and has her opinion about the Emperor, the King
of Prussia, and the Pope. And she can live with people who know much
more than herself, or much less, without betraying the difference
between herself and them. She can be gay with the gay, and enjoy that;
or dull with the dull, and seem to enjoy that. What man as he travels
learns so much, works so hard, uses so much mental power, takes so
much trouble in all things, as she does? She is never impatient, never
exacting, never cross, never conquered, never triumphant, never humble,
never boastful, never ill, never in want of assistance. If she fall
into difficulties she escapes from them without a complaint. If she be
ill-used she bears it without a murmur; if disappointed,--as must so
often be the case with her,--she endures her cross and begins again
with admirable assiduity. Yet she is only an unprotected female, and
they who meet her on her travels are too apt to declare that she is an
old soldier.
Unprotected female tourists, such as I have described, are not very
numerous; but there are enough of them to form a class by themselves.
From year to year, as we make our autumn excursions, we see perhaps
one of them, and perhaps a second. We meet the same lady two or three
times, making with her a pleasant acquaintance, and then passing on.
The farther we go afield the more likely we are to encounter her.
She is always to be met with on the Nile; she is quite at home at
Constantinople; she goes frequently to Spain; you will probably find
her in Central America; but her head-quarters are perhaps at Jerusalem.
She prefers the saddle to any other mode of travelling, and can sit
on horseback for any number of hours without flinching. For myself,
I have always liked the company of the unprotected female, and have
generally felt something like the disruption of a tender friendship
when circumstances have torn me from her.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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