If I wrote the story of my days during these last thirty years, it wouldbe the story of hard work. No doubt the work often looked to othersuncommonly like play, but it was work all the same.From the start it must have struck those who did not understand andwho were interested, or curious enough to spare a thought, that myprincipal occupation was to amuse myself. When I was young, inAmerica the "trip to Europe" was considered the crowning pleasure,or symbol of pleasure, within the possibility of hope for even thosewho were most given to pleasure. In Philadelphia it also stood formoney--not necessarily wealth, but the comfortably assured incomethat made existence behind Philadelphia's spacious red brick frontsthe average Philadelphian's right. And it was with this trip that J.and I began our life together. But misleading as was the impressionmade to all whom it did not concern, great satisfaction as it was tomy family, who saw in it the ease and comfort it represented to thePhiladelphian, we ourselves, with the best will in the world, couldimagine it no holiday for us, nor accept it as the symbol of thecorrect Philadelphia income. Our pleasure was in the fact of themany and definite commissions which obliged us to go to Europe toearn any sort of an income, correct or otherwise--commissionswithout which we could have faced neither the trip nor marriage. Ican remember that during the two or three weeks between our weddingand our sailing we were both kept busy, J. with drawings he had tofinish for the _Century_, and I with the last touches to an articlefor the _Atlantic_. And if the days on the boat gave us breathingspace, if not much work, except in preparation, was done, the reasonwas that the new commissions commenced only with our landing atLiverpool.From the moment of our arrival in England I see in memory my life by dayas one long vista of work. It is mostly a beautiful vista, the morebeautiful, I am ready to admit, because the work I owed the beauty toforced me to keep my eyes open and my wits about me. Under thecircumstances, I simply could not afford to let what small powers ofobservation I possess grow rusty, for, no matter what else might happen,I had to turn my journey into some sort of readable "copy" afterwards.If I know parts of Europe fairly well, I am indebted not to thefashionable need of taking waters, not to following the approved routesof travel, not to meeting my fellow countrymen in hotels as alike as twopeas no matter how different the capitals to which they belong, not toany fatuous preference of another country to my own, but to the workthat brought us to England and the Continent and has kept us there, withfresh commissions, ever since.