By Way of an Introduction. 7 



introduced to fifteen or twenty people at a time, it is very 

 hard for me to remember which is which. It is a peculi- 

 arity that runs in our family. I am very fond of coffee, 

 good coffee, that is. Deliver me from poor coffee. And 

 another interesting- thing about me is that I don't like 

 to eat I forget for the moment what it is that other 

 people like to eat that I don't, but let that pass. Maybe 

 it will come to me by and by, but if it doesn't it's no great 

 matter, for I was only going to say that not only can I 

 talk by the hour about myself, the center of the visible 

 universe, the point from which the circle of the horizon 

 is described, but about the other beings in the near 

 neighborhood of that center ; of what a 'cute thing my 

 little girl said yesterday and about a dog I once had. 

 Probably I would, if in my mind's eye I did not see you 

 nervously crossing and uncrossing your legs and starting 

 in four or five times, when YOU thought there was a chance 



/ c_> 



to get a word in edgewise, to tell how you always have 

 tea for breakfast and what your little boy said and about 

 that parrot your Aunt Jane had. 



The collection and comparison of facts, science, in a 

 word, proceeds thus outwardly. First, we observe our- 

 se'Ives and what concerns us. Then other people attract 

 our notice and we are interested in the ridiculous ways 

 they have. Of all the absurd creatures on the face of the 

 earth I think other people are the absurdest. Then obser- 

 vation extends to other places and even lands beyond sea, 

 where folks behave still more nonsensically. The Chinese, 

 for example, think that the magnetic needle points to the 

 south, when anybody with any sense at all can see that 

 it points straight to the north. 



However, of late the world has become so shrunken 

 together, as it were, that we have grown surfeited with 

 books of travel. While thev are undoubtedly of the same 



