: The Complete Project Gutenberg Writings of Charles Dudley Warner by Warner Charles Dudley - Literature Collections; American literature 19th century

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: Baddeck and That Sort of Thing My Summer In A Garden Calvin A Study Of Character Backlog Studies In The Wilderness How I Killed A Bear Lost In The Woods A Fight With A Trout A-Hunting Of The Deer A Character Study Camping Out A Wilderness Romance What Some People Call Pleasure How Spring Came In New England Captain John Smith The Story Of Pocahontas Saunterings Being A Boy On Horseback

As We Were Saying Rose And Chrysanthemum The Red Bonnet The Loss In Civilization Social Screaming Does Refinement Kill Individuality? The Directoire Gown The Mystery Of The Sex The Clothes Of Fiction The Broad A Chewing Gum Women In Congress Shall Women Propose? Frocks And The Stage Altruism Social Clearing-House Dinner-Table Talk Naturalization Art Of Governing Love Of Display Value Of The Commonplace The Burden Of Christmas The Responsibility Of Writers The Cap And Gown A Tendency Of The Age A Locoed Novelist

As We Go Our President The Newspaper-Made Man Interesting Girls Give The Men A Chance The Advent Of Candor The American Man The Electric Way Can A Husband Open His Wife's Letters? A Leisure Class Weather And Character Born With An "Ego" Juventus Mundi A Beautiful Old Age The Attraction Of The Repulsive Giving As A Luxury Climate And Happiness The New Feminine Reserve Repose In Activity Women--Ideal And Real The Art Of Idleness Is There Any Conversation The Tall Girl The Deadly Diary The Whistling Girl Born Old And Rich The "Old Soldier" The Island Of Bimini June

Nine Short Essays A Night In The Garden Of The Tuileries Truthfulness The Pursuit Of Happiness Literature And The Stage The Life-Saving And Life Prolonging Art "H.H." In Southern California Simplicity The English Volunteers During The Late Invasion Nathan Hale

Trilogy A Little Journey In The World The Golden House That Fortune

Their Pilgrimage Washington Irving

BADDECK AND THAT SORT OF THING

PREFACE TO JOSEPH H. TWICHELL

It would be unfair to hold you responsible for these light sketches of a summer trip, which are now gathered into this little volume in response to the usual demand in such cases; yet you cannot escape altogether. For it was you who first taught me to say the name Baddeck; it was you who showed me its position on the map, and a seductive letter from a home missionary on Cape Breton Island, in relation to the abundance of trout and salmon in his field of labor. That missionary, you may remember, we never found, nor did we see his tackle; but I have no reason to believe that he does not enjoy good fishing in the right season. You understand the duties of a home missionary much better than I do, and you know whether he would be likely to let a couple of strangers into the best part of his preserve.

But I am free to admit that after our expedition was started you speedily relieved yourself of all responsibility for it, and turned it over to your comrade with a profound geographical indifference; you would as readily have gone to Baddeck by Nova Zembla as by Nova Scotia. The flight over the latter island was, you knew, however, no part of our original plan, and you were not obliged to take any interest in it. You know that our design was to slip rapidly down, by the back way of Northumberland Sound, to the Bras d'Or, and spend a week fishing there; and that the greater part of this journey here imperfectly described is not really ours, but was put upon us by fate and by the peculiar arrangement of provincial travel.

It would have been easy after our return to have made up from libraries a most engaging description of the Provinces, mixing it with historical, legendary, botanical, geographical, and ethnological information, and seasoning it with adventure from your glowing imagination. But it seemed to me that it would be a more honest contribution if our account contained only what we saw, in our rapid travel; for I have a theory that any addition to the great body of print, however insignificant it may be, has a value in proportion to its originality and individuality,--however slight either is,--and very little value if it is a compilation of the observations of others. In this case I know how slight the value is; and I can only hope that as the trip was very entertaining to us, the record of it may not be wholly unentertaining to those of like tastes.

Of one thing, my dear friend, I am certain: if the readers of this little journey could have during its persual the companionship that the writer had when it was made, they would think it altogether delightful. There is no pleasure comparable to that of going about the world, in pleasant weather, with a good comrade, if the mind is distracted neither by care, nor ambition, nor the greed of gain. The delight there is in seeing things, without any hope of pecuniary profit from them! We certainly enjoyed that inward peace which the philosopher associates with the absence of desire for money. For, as Plato says in the Phaedo, "whence come wars and fightings and factions? whence but from the body and the lusts of the body? For wars are occasioned by the love of money." So also are the majority of the anxieties of life. We left these behind when we went into the Provinces with no design of acquiring anything there. I hope it may be my fortune to travel further with you in this fair world, under similar circumstances.

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