I had traveled and lived for the most part alone,
and one of the greatest pleasures connected with my life in Europe was
the anticipation of telling my friends who had never crossed the ocean
what I had seen, heard, and done.
But when I returned to America I met with a great disappointment: my
glowing anticipations were not realized. I could find scarcely any one
who cared to know what I had seen, heard, or done.
At this I was as much surprised as disappointed. I believed that I
possessed fair powers of description and narration, and many of my
traveling experiences were out of the common. In fact, I had endeavored
to see things the ordinary traveler does not see, and to do things which
he seldom does. I found, however, that my unusual experiences were of no
advantage to me in making people desirous to hear accounts of my
travels. I might as well have joined a party of personally conducted
tourists.
My friends and acquaintances in town were all glad to see me, not that
they might hear what had happened to me, but that they might tell me
what had happened to them. This disposition sometimes threw me into a
state of absolute amazement. I could not comprehend, for instance, why
Mrs. Gormer, who had known me for years, and who I thought would take
such an active interest in everything that concerned me, should dismiss
my European tour with a few remarks in regard to my health in the
countries I had passed through, and then begin an animated account of
the troubles she had had since I had been away: how the house she had
been living in had had two feet of water in the cellar for weeks at a
time, and how nobody could find out whether it was caused by a spring in
the ground or the bursting of an unknown water-pipe,--but no matter what
it was, they couldn't stay there; and what a dreadful time they had in
finding another house; and how the day appointed for Jennie's wedding
coming directly in the middle of the moving, it had to be postponed, for
she declared she would never be married anywhere but at home; and how
several of Mr.
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