After all it should be our first object in our autumn tourings to like the business that we have in hand. In all that we do, whether of work or play, this should be a great object with us, seeing that the comfort or discomfort--we may almost say the happiness or unhappiness--of our life depends upon it. But one would suppose that in these vacation rambles of ours, made for the recreation of our health and the delectation of our spirits, there would be no doubt on this head,--no doubt as to our taking due care that our amusement should be to our own liking, and that we so journeyed as to be able to enjoy our journeyings. But there is reason to fear that such enjoyment does not always result from the efforts made. We see, alas, too many of our countrymen struggling through the severe weeks of their annual holiday with much of the agony but with little of the patience of martyrs. We see them thwarted at every turn and cross because they are thwarted. We see them toiling as no money-reward would induce them to toil at home, and toiling with very little of that reward for which they are looking. We see them hot and dusty, ill at ease, out of their element, bored almost past their powers of endurance, so weary with work as to drag along their unhappy limbs in actual suffering, dreading what is to come, and looking back upon what they have accomplished as though to have done the thing, to have got their tour over and finished, was the only gratification of which they were susceptible. And with many tourists this final accomplishment of the imposed task is the only gratification which the task affords. To have been over the railroads of the Continent, to have touched at some of those towns whose names are known so widely, to have been told that such a summit was called by one name and such another summit by another name, to have crossed the mountains and heard the whistle of a steamer on an Italian lake,--to have done these things so that the past accomplishment of them may be garnered like a treasure, is very well;--but oh and alas, the doing of them!--the troubles, the cares, the doubts, the fears! Is it not almost a question whether it would not be better to live at home quietly and unambitiously, without the garnering of any treasure which cannot be garnered without so much discomfort and difficulty? But yet the tourists go. Though the difficulties are great, their ambition is greater. It does not do to confess that you have not seen an Alp or drunk German beer.